


Chapter 3-E.V. The Extravehicular

by Sketchpad



Series: The Mysteries Of Marcie Fleach [3]
Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (TV 2010)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sketchpad/pseuds/Sketchpad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A rash of car thefts hit Crystal Cove and the culprits are as strange as the methods of the crime. Marcie wil need to think outside the box to solve this mystery. The Proof is out There!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

The darkened meeting room's subtle, high-tech interior was incongruous with the rest of Douglas Whitechapel's preserved and reserved English estate.

The nine places on the wide, oval table each had a small monitor, keypad and USB hub built in, so that the guests seated therein could control and input images or data onto the large flat screen monitor that hung on a far wall, flanked with rare tapestries.

So far, only eight bodies were seated, some of the most influential movers and shakers in Europe and the United Kingdom. They were also some of the most influential neo-pagans and neo-druids in Europe and the United Kingdom.

Mr. Whitechapel sat in his seat at the head of the table, watching the seconds until the meeting started tick down, until...

"It seems our ninth member felt he had something more important to do that grace us with his presence," said Whitechapel, smoothly, sipping hot Chamomile tea. "Very well. This meeting will now commence."

The oak double doors parted and a tall man strode into the room, his visage and hair mirroring that of an owl.

"The meeting already started, Greenman," Whitechapel informed the man, who took his seat anyway.

"I shant stay long, Whitey," Greenman informed _him_ , not caring to be casually insouciant to the host. "I have to return to the States in a bit. I just swung by to give you a proposal. One I think all at present will want to hear."

Whitechapel sat back, ignoring Greenman's flippancy, and considered for a moment, then sighed, giving his permission.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the dream will soon become true," Greenman said with cryptic pride.

"What are you talking about, Greenman?" one woman asked across from him.

"The dream that shaped this meeting," he answered. "The dream that forged this secret group, that it may not be secret much longer."

"The Druid World Order?" gasped a man further from Greenman. "It's actually going to happen?"

"Yes," Greenman answered again, sounding solemn. "A return to the perfect, earthly paradigm of the Old Ways. A true, harmonious balance of god, nature, and man. And all by my hand."

Whitechapel stiffened a little at that admission. "By _your_ hand, you say? Then how will you go about this renaissance, future champion of the Old Ways?"

Greenman ignored the man's jibe and addressed the members again. "I have already invested considerable sums from my own personal fortune to see this through, that's how confident I am in this endeavor. All I ask is that is that when the time comes for your support, you will offer it to me willing, gladly, as I would do if the situation was reversed, so that we can change the world."

The eight murmured in deep thought, either alone or amongst themselves, trying to digest this sudden news. He didn't ask for anything at the moment, which was comforting to the more penurious among them, but if what he was saying was true, if it was possible to bring this holy return of Druidism...

"What kind of support will you want from us?" another woman asked carefully.

Greenman gave her a satisfied, yet placating grin. "For now, just your emotional support to see me through this first hurdle. Later, I may* need your financial support, of which I will pay back in full, with the completion of my task."

Again, Greenman heard grumbles and private conversations once more. This time, something more concrete came of it.

A small number of members slowly, _grudgingly_ gave their support, and the larger group, seemingly led by Whitechapel, quietly, yet politely, refused. Greenman expected as much.

Satisfied with his group's solidarity, Whitechapel leaned forward in his seat and looked at Greenman with the attitude of a annoyed teacher tolerating the tedious antics of some wayward student.

"Since all decisions in the group are made by vote, and the apparent nays outnumber the yeas by measurable degree, all you have managed to do, Greenman, is waste this body's time," he said, flatly.

Greenman calmly reached into the handkerchief pocket of his silk suit and pulled out a flash drive.

"No, Whitey," he said. "All I've managed to do is not fully convince you."

He slid the drive into the USB hub in his station on the table and pressed a button next to it, the light from his table monitor giving his under lit face a sinister glow. The wide screen monitor on the far wall flickered as he got up and walked over to it.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Greenman said with proud certainty. "I give you the key that will open the gates of our pagan Promised Land."

On the screen, for every believer and doubter to see, was the interior of a warehouse. In the center of the shot, zoomed in for clarity, was the wrecked Hour Tower of the erstwhile T.H.R.O.B.A.C.

* * *

The heavy-set, balding man walked through his dark lobby, clad in all his tacky glory, in a plaid suit that proudly displayed peach and pink patterns in garish combinations, with a touch of blue necktie, for bad measure.

Sam "Glad-hand" Mackey gave a weary wave to the security guard that stood by the main entrance and waited for him to pass so he could lock the doors and arm the security system.

The cool air of the night hit him. It was invigorating after hours of phone calls, meetings and paperwork.

He gave the handle on his briefcase a reassuring grip and smiled to himself. This kind of work was part and parcel for someone who was the owner of the largest car dealership in Crystal Cove.

An even more pleasant thought eased his mind as he walked past the other cars in the employees' parking lot. The thought that his competition, Steve Powers, was probably going home right about now, as well, musing and, no doubt, fuming about his position as number two in town.

He gave a proud glance over towards the used car lot in the distance. Every car sold was a badge of honor to his prowess as a consummate salesman.

He thought of the groundwork and financing he laid down during his years working in the sales department of the very dealership he now owned, planning and honing his craft, gathering all the capital he needed through years of sweat and gift of gab, until, finally, he had successfully bought the dealership from the older businessman who manned it.

It was his earthly triumph, his legacy to pass on, in time, and it was the seat of his automotive kingdom. So long as he breathed, it would not fall.

Beelining through the few employees' car that were left in the lot, Mackey was so engrossed with his own musings that he barely paid attention to the low-frequency thrum that seemed to come from everywhere, growing in volume.

Mackey turned his head to where he surmised the sound was coming from, once he noticed the noise, and saw something that stunned him to the core, coming out of the night sky.

A UFO.

It was a large, flat, disk-shaped craft, rimmed with iridescent lights of various shapes and widths along the bottom of the ship. And, to the man's deep concern, was heading in his general direction with slow purpose.

Mackey's brain debated with itself at lightning speed. There was only himself and the security guard here, the only witnesses to this strange happening. Were they hostile? He was logically unsure how to proceed, and was prepared to return to the relative safety of the offices to call the police, when something happened that set him on his chosen path.

The starcraft stopped over the used cars and hovered there for several moments. Then a single beam of intense light spot lit a car that was directly underneath. Mackey didn't need to think twice about what was becoming apparent. One of his cars was about to be stolen.

The security guard who had waved to Mackey earlier, unlocked the doors and stepped outside in response to the activity and sounds, just in time to see his Mackey drop his briefcase to the ground and run towards the theft that was occurring.

"Mr. Mackey!" the guard yelled. "Where are you going?"

Mackey, hearing the guard, yelled back to him what he supposed would be his last words on Earth, "To save my babies!"

The businessman had to stop just short of the bottom of the spaceship. Due to the lighting of the craft, he had to shield his eyes with his hands, while a downward, miniature storm blew under the ship, rocking the targeted car and forcing Mackey back a few paces.

Moving his hands away from his face, Mackey could make out movement through the glowing haze of the unbearable lights, and then saw a figure walk, unaffected, to him and stop just shy of the lightbeam obscuring the car.

Hearing the guard run up to him, Mackey felt confident to ask over the din of the hovering ship, "Who are you? What are you doing to my cars?"

The figure, greenish-gray in pallor and bulbous of head, stared at the Humans with cool patience through black, wide eyes. In its hand, it held a gun-like object to its side. Mackey and the guard had noticed it, and hoped it wasn't a weapon.

From all around the immediate area, a voice of halting speech called forth in response to Mackey's queries.

_"We are the Voxellan. We require your vehicles to repair our great warship. Although we are not at war with your species, do not interfere and you will not be harmed."_

Even though the aliens had made their intentions known in perfect English, Mackey hadn't a clue what was going on. All he understood was that his precious cars were about to abducted. To Mackey, that simply would not do.

"Get away from my inventory, you bowling pin-headed freakshow!" he yelled at the figure standing between him and his property. "I just got 'em fresh from the factory last month!"

Mackey girded his loins and was prepared to step forward to challenge the thieves, then he noticed that the guard was keeping his distance, fearfully.

"C'mon!" Mackey yelled to him. "Help me beat these whatchamawhosits back!"

"Sorry, Mr. Mackey! My company doesn't pay me _that_ well!"

"Fine," Mackey growled. "Remind me tomorrow to get you replaced with someone with a spine."

"First thing, sir!" the guard gladly assured him as he watched Mackey march up to the alien, fists balled.

"And as for you, if you're not here to buy a car, then you better leave 'em alone," the businessman warned, mentally preparing himself for, perhaps, history's first interspecies fistfight, "or I'm going to drop-kick you back to Jupiter, you gray-skinned-"

The alien raised the gun shaped device before Mackey took another step, squeezed the trigger, and both Mackey and the reluctant guard's world exploded in a blast of unbearably, painfully, bright light.

Between the ponderously heavy hum of the spacecraft above them, and being struck blind, the two men cried out, and rolled on the asphalt in pain and sensory confusion for what felt like hours.

The guard eventually was the first to recover, starting with hearing. He gradually heard only the sounds of light, nighttime traffic, and the soft distant melody of cricket chirps.

He opened his eyes, and, remembering the last thing he saw, was grateful he could see the dark undercarriage of the nearby car he crawled in agony beside.

The guard rose unsteadily, leaning against the car for support, and upon standing fully, looked around. He then heard Mr. Mackey gather his wits and slowly stand a few feet from him.

"Mr. Mackey," the guard said quietly, in the hopes of cushioning the shock of what was to come.

Mackey turned his clearing head, surveying his used car lot for damage. He saw something far worse in his eyes.

A chunk of his inventory was taken from his parked formation of used cars, about ten, from his panicked, horrified count. He didn't know whether to spit curses or cry. So he simply screamed, instead.

_"My babies!"_

* * *

The pervasive, work-a-day attitude of the various and myriad employees was successfully transmuted to uncertainty and outright panic that Saturday afternoon, when the _Clue Cruiser_ tore up and down the formerly bustling streets of Crystal Cove's CC Studios.

"Where do they keep getting those _Tesla coils_ from?" Marcie asked herself, exasperated, through gritted teeth as she wrenched the steering wheel of her car to the side, avoiding an arc of portable, man-made lightning from the left gauntlet of the futuristic-looking bounty hunter who kept his aerial distance from her via jet pack.

"Where else?" Jason spoke up from the back seat. "SmartyMart."

Next to the rotund boy sat distraught studio owner, Albrect J. Schwartz, who gritted _his_ teeth every time a wayward bolt struck a stage door, a prop man, or worse, a union worker.

"I don't care where he's getting his gear!" he yelled. "Just stop him from wrecking my studio!"

"Hang on!" Marcie said.

She dodged another bolt as the bounty man made a sharp bank around the corner of a studio building, hoping to lose her in the chaos of the last minute attack.

The bounty man, in question, was Hunter X, the hero of the now defunct sci-fi TV show of the same name. Cornered by Marcie and her friends after deducing his plan to destroy CC Studios, where it was produced, and so, take it out on Schwartz for the show's cancellation, the fictional bounty hunter literally took off on a swath of destruction.

Sitting beside Marcie, Daisy Blake was thankful for wearing her seat belt while she hung onto the front passenger seat's cushion and passenger side door handle in order to keep from getting thrown this way and that in the chase through the studio's backlots.

"Guess he wants go out in a blaze of glory, huh?" she asked Marcie.

"Looks that way," said Marcie, her eyes fixed on both the quickly emptying streets and the fleeing culprit. "Let's hope Professor Pending's jammer works at this range."

Marcie took a second to look at her car's small dashboard and the even smaller bank of switches and colored buttons that was installed close to the radio.

Her hand flashed over to press hard at one of the buttons, then her attention jumped back to Hunter X.

From the driver's side fender, a tiny hatch, that was closed flush against the top of the fender, popped open, and a miniature radar dish rose, rotated, and fixed itself on Hunter X's position up ahead.

Hunter X turned his armored head to favor his pursuers for a moment.

"You wasting your time, scrags! I'm Hunter X, and you're dogmeat!" he crowed, finishing with his catchphrase. Then his attitude changed, and not for the better.

The bounty hunter shuddered and fluttered in mid-air, and, knowing how high up he was, gave an uncharacteristically panicky scream.

Components built into his armor began trailing wisps of smoke, and what started as descent, became a full-blown plummet, as the jammer worked to scramble the signals sent from the control pad on the high-tech armor's right-hand bracer to the ignition and steering systems of the now sputtering and failing jet pack.

His momentum, direction, and remaining speed, however, was unabated, as he fell into a bouncing, rolling crash into the side of an unlucky catering cart.

The _Clue Cruiser_ stopped just short of the food-covered criminal and the wreckage of the food cart. A potato salad-smeared arm unsteadily shot up to deliver another devastating blast of electricity from close range, but the signal to activate the gauntlet's Tesla coil died in its transmitter, due to the jammer still blanketing the Hunter X with potent waves of car battery-powered RF interference.

Two security carts caught up with the _Cruiser_ , zooming out from side streets in the backlot. They quickly flanked the neutralized Hunter X and the upturned cart, and two guards from each cart disembarked and subdue him.

Marcie, Daisy, Jason and Albrect stepped out of the convertible and walked over to the television character.

Boldly taking hold of Hunter X's helm, Daisy pulled it free from the rest of him. An irate, big-nosed, squinty-eyed man in tousled brown hair glared at the assembly.

"You're not Robert Endicott, the actor," Albrect J. Schwartz exclaimed in disbelief.

"Who is he?" asked Daisy. Jason perked up in recognition.

"He's Harvard Dole, creator and head writer of Hunter X," he explained to her.

"That's right," Harvard said with a sneer. "I came up with the idea of the show. Hunter X was my creation. It should have _never_ been cancelled, and it wouldn't have been cancelled, if it weren't for that no-talent hack Endicott making a mockery of my character."

"So you were disgruntled and wanted to ruin Robert's reputation and Albrect's studio," Marcie surmised.

"Yes," the writer admitted. "They both needed to pay. Robert would have been framed for Albrect's studio going up, and I would've gotten away with it, as well, if it weren't for you meddlesome walk-ons."

Albrect straightened his red, coke-bottle glasses, pointed to Dole, and said to his guards, "Take him to the station. I'll call the sheriff to have him picked up."

He then turned to the detectives as Dole was driven away. "I have to say, I had no idea that you kids could solve this mystery," he said. "Thank you for saving my studio."

Marcie slid back into her car and started the engine while the other teens stepped in again.

"Not a problem, Mr. Schwartz," she told him. "I'm glad we could help. You have a nice day."

As she pulled away from the returning crowds, curious to see the end of Hunter X's rampage, Marcie asked her friends, "Thanks for helping me with this case, guys. Where would you like me to drop you off?"

"Well, I gotta go home," Jason said. "I want to go online to see if my Hunter X merchandise has gone up in value, now that the creator of the show is going to jail."

"Daisy?" Marcie asked the woman next to her.

"I don't know. I figured we could hang out, unless you're heading home, too."

"Nope," Marcie said with something of a weary sigh. "Someone needs me to solve another mystery. It looks like I'm starting to get a bit of a reputation in this town."

"Don't sweat it, Marcie," Daisy consoled her, cheerfully. "It's the price you pay for being good at what you're do."

"I guess so," Marcie said, brightening with a lopsided smile. She merged with the weekend traffic, and absently thought about Velma, wondering about what kind of sleuthing machine the memory of her friend was slowly making her.


	2. 2

 

"That's the sixth hit this week," Sheriff Stone muttered to himself in Mackey's office.

Covering the office walls were old newspaper clippings celebrating the opening of his Mackey's business, and others, declaring his eventual position as the largest dealership in town, next to his local competitor, Steve Powers.

Framed and doctored photographs of celebrities and politicians posing with Mackey filled the bare spaces that the clippings didn't cover.

Stone took a casual glance out the wide window behind the business owner's desk, and watched his deputies prowl around the used car lot for clues.

"First, there was that criminal hippy with mind-control powers, then, that greedy scientist and his giant, time traveling robot, and now, car-jacking aliens? Last thing this town needs is to be known for weird things like this," the sheriff grumbled.

"Take it up with the Chamber of Commerce," Mackey said, irritably. "Are you going to do something about this, Sheriff? Summer's coming soon and I want to be ready for it with my inventory intact."

"Aren't your cars insured already, Mr. Mackey?" Stone asked, already tired of him.

"Yes, and that's besides the point. My babies are gone. They're irreplaceable...until they're sold, of course. How can I do that, if some UFO keeps pulling off a GTA? I want you to catch them and dissect them."

"We're working on it, Mr. Mackey," Stone placated. "We've already questioned the guard who was with you and he corroborates your story. Although I should tell you, sir, capture and dissection is thoroughly frowned upon in the law enforcement community."

"Humph!"

"Look at it this way," Stone suggested as a way to diffuse the tension. "With all the other cars being ripped-off by these aliens, maybe the victims will want new cars, and will come over to buy some from you."

"That's probably the savviest thing you ever said, Sheriff. Wish I'd thought of that," said a young, slick-suited man in yellow-tinted sunglasses leaning against the office doorframe.

"Powers," Mackey muttered by way of greeting.

"Hey, Mackerel, how's tricks?" Powers asked, smoothly. "Can't stay long. Heard about your loss. How many were snatched? Ten, I hear. Ouch! That's a bite!"

"Sheriff," Mackey said, without missing a beat. "arrest that man for trespassing. I'm a witness."

Powers waved the threat away with a chuckle. "Don't worry, Mack Truck, I'll be gone. It's just not every day you get a chance to see a dinosaur become extinct."

"You heard him, Sheriff," Mackey said. "He threatened my life. You're a witness."

"The extinction of a life form? That would be something to see, Mr. Powers," Marcie said, walking into the office, followed by Daisy.

Upon her arrival, the teen could see, all over the large-windowed office, and on his desk, what clearly made Mr. Sam Mackey tick. _Sam Mackey._

She noticed on his desk that there were no photos of family, but instead, a lovingly framed photo of himself, that didn't surprised Marcie in the least.

"Fleach," Stone sighed in weary displeasure. "Why are you here? Don't you have a car, already?"

Powers turned to the newcomers, quickly switching to Salesman Mode. He took Marcie's hand lightly and shook it.

"Ah, hello, my dear. Steve Powers of Powers Autos. You’ll be driving for hours in a Powers. I couldn't help hearing that you have a car. Did it, perhaps, come from _my_ fair showroom?"

Before she could say anything, however, Mackey stood up from his desk, and walked over to the two of them.

"Amateur," he scoffed at his Powers. "Let me show you how it's done." He then turned to Marcie with his best grin.

"Well, how are you, little lady?" he asked, thrusting a pudgy hand at her and initiating a well-practiced handshake. "Like I always say, "You'll save more with Mackey." Now, this fine automobile you're driving. Did it come from _my_ fine selection?"

Marcie, slightly shaken by the aggressive attention, managed to say, "Um, neither, actually. Sorry."

Mackey glared at Powers. "Not a problem, darling. I would have given you a sweeter deal than _Powder_ , here."

"Please, you dime store huckster," Powers shot back. "Go back to the corn fields."

"You hack!"

Marcie, recovering from the glad-handed assault, said to Mackey, "Uh, sir, you wanted to talk to me, this afternoon, about the thefts of some of your cars."

Mackey switched tracks from competing salesman to suffering patron in a flash. "Oh, yeah! Well, to be honest with ya, I sorta expected someone a little older dealing with this. Are you sure you can handle this, little lady?"

"I can assure you, sir, I've had some experience in this kind of thing," Marcie reassured him, choosing not to tell him that her "experience in this kind of thing" was limited, to say the least. But, she heard, with practice, came perfection. Usually.

The only rebuttal Marcie caught from Sheriff Stone was a scoffing snort in her general direction.

"Sorry, Mandy," Stone said, puffing up his already broad chest some. "Mr. Mackey called me first, earlier this morning. My men are combing the place now for leads, so you can go back to your little chemistry set."

"I'm confused, Mr. Mackey," Marcie said to the businessman, after ignoring Bronson. "I’ve heard about the recent thefts, but if you already called for the sheriff, then why call for me, afterwards?"

Mackey seemed placated. "Well, it's true, I did tell the sheriff about the thefts, but I don't think they're finding their _leads_ fast enough. I didn't feel like waiting for more of my cars to be stolen, so, strangely enough, I called on you."

Marcie couldn't help feeling a surprising, thrilling twinge of pride. That when even the police had trouble with a case, she was actually being _considered_ by the citizenry itself. She hoped this new-born reputation didn't develop a life of its own and consume her, somehow, like some Frankenstein's Monster.

"Very well, Mr. Mackey," Marcie proceeded carefully. "Do you know which cars were stolen?"

"Some of my best models," he said. "Say, you drove up here, yourself, didn't ya?"

"Yes. Why?"

Mackey gave a slight grin. "Well, I was thinking that if you find out what happened to my cars, I could get you a good discount on one of my cars. Sort of a gift for a job well done."

Powers snorted. "You _would_ have to bribe customers to get rid of that crappy inventory of yours."

"Well, thank you, Mr. Mackey, but that won't be necessary," Marcie demurred, wanting to get beck on track.

Mackey shrugged. "Well, suit yourself. I just hope I can get my cars back. I feel like a rancher that just got his best heifers rustled."

Stone chose that moment to jump into the conversation. "Don't worry, sir. In situations like these, it helps to think like a rustler, in order to catch him," he pontificated smoothly. "And if there's one thing we sheriffs know how to do, it's catch rustlers."

Marcie suddenly wondered when did she step into a Western. "Don't worry, Mr. Mackey. I'll do everything I can to find your cars, or, failing that, I'll help the police by giving them all the information that I find."

Stone, hearing that, scoffed loudly. "Yeah, right."

"I would," the girl said, honestly. "Despite what you might think, I'm not trying to compete with you, Sheriff. I just want to do what I can to help out, that's all."

Stone turned his head away and muttered, "Whatever."

Sensing the discomfort in the air, Mackey resumed the business at hand. "Well, okay then. If you think you can do it."

Marcie turned her attention back to the businessman. "Thank you, sir. I'll start right away."

Mackey and she shook hands, and then she and Daisy turned to leave the office.

"You two have a nice day, now," Mackey bade them as they departed.

"You, too, sir," said Marcie.

* * *

 

After her talk with Mackey, Marcie and Daisy took their leave of the men and went back outside to where Marcie had parked in the customers' parking lot. Before she approached her car, however, Marcie gave a thoughtful look out over the vast used car lot nearby.

In the light of day, the autos did look as vulnerable in the lot as prized cattle in an unguarded corral. Indeed, it lent credence to Mackey's comment about feeling like a besieged rancher, and gave Marcie a moment to think of what Sheriff Stone had said. She would most likely have to think like a rustler, herself, before for too long.

Leaving her car behind, Marcie strode around the length of the property that housed the huge, museum-like showroom and the offices, and the expanse of the bannered lots filled with, as yet, untouched cars, with a puzzled Daisy, following her.

"What's up, Marcie? Where are you going?" Blake asked.

"To ask more questions," answered Marcie.

Following her up-turned nose, she caught the synthetic waft of lubricants, coolants and exhaust, and finally reached the rear of the complex, approaching the entrance of the dealership's cavernous service area.

From the driveway, the two girls could see row upon row of hydraulically raised cars being attended to by mechanics and other technicians in a loud, never-ceasing ballet of labor, reaching and handling, loosening and tightening, and lifting and lowering with all the swift purpose and care of a select cadre of social insects caring for the most important members of a colony.

Daisy hung back at the entranceway as Marcie entered the unfamiliar place and the echoing cacophony of whining air wrenches, dropped tools, ringing, hissing air hoses, car lifts humming, engines starting and Muzak playing.

Marcie navigated the unfamiliar place, and it took her a few moments of looking around, being careful not to get in the mechanics' way, before she recognized the person she wanted as he pulled himself out from under the hood of a recently bought Mackey automobile.

 _'I guess you get what you paid for,'_ thought Marcie as she approached the laborer from behind.

She slapped a thin hand on his broad shoulder, causing Red Herring to start with a gasp that was barely audible among the ambient noise within.

He turned and, upon seeing Marcie, eased into a exhaustive smile.

"How are you, Red?" Marcie asked above the noise of the garage.

"Hey, Marcie!" Red yelled through the din. "What are you doing here?"

"Your boss call me after his cars were stolen from here last night! I just came over to ask him what he knew about it."

Red glanced towards the entranceway. "Can we go someplace quieter? I'm losing my voice talking this loud!"

"Agreed!"

Red wiped his greasy hands with an old rag, then followed Marcie out of the garage, where he beheld a redheaded vision.

His brain tuned out the noise of the garage and focused all of its attention on the beautiful teen standing behind the bespectacled Marcie.

He knew he was standing on solid ground, but it suddenly felt like he was hanging off the roof of the Creationex World Headquarters Building. It felt heart-pounding, yet, oh, so exhilarating.

"Wow! Hello!" Red greeted Daisy, moving between her and Marcie, followed by a clumsy attempt at being suave. "Are you her sister? Because if you are, it's clear that you've got the looks in the family."

Marcie gave a sigh. She hadn't come all this way to play Miss Matchmaker.

"She's not my sister, _Crassanova_ ," Marcie explained. "This is my friend, Daisy Blake."

To Daisy, she said to her, "Daisy, this lovesick grease monkey, here, is Red Herring. We met in jail once."

Red continued, unabated. "You know, Daisy, I'm chief mechanic here. If you like, I could take you on a tour of the place."

Daisy pointed to the sewed-on label on his chest. "Your uniform says "assistant.""

"Oh, uh, yeah," Red chuckled, his lie torpedoed so quickly by the girl's observation. "That's because my regular uniform is getting washed. I had to throw on this old thing."

Then his brain brought up an issue that he had just heard. Something that could deeply affect his chances with her. "Wait a minute. Blake? You're a _Blake?_ One of the richest families in town?"

Daisy pleasantly waved it away. She had seen this reaction far too often. "Yeah, but I don't advertise that. Don't worry about it, though. Compared to my other sisters, I'm clearly the black sheep of the family."

A rebel. Red was liking what he was hearing already. "Oh! Dropped outta college, like me, huh?" he asked.

"No way! I just like to dumpster dive."

Red didn't know how to react to that. He was flabbergasted, but was that because he misread her, or because she was that much different from the other girls in town?

"Huh?" he asked.

Daisy, not noticing his stunned expression, was struck by a moment of inspiration. "As a matter of fact, I think I'll take you up on that tour."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, I was wondering if this place had any dumpsters."

"Dumpsters?" Red asked. This was a cute, but strange girl.

"Oh, yeah," Daisy said, as easy as she pleased. "I like to collect odds and ends. I just figured a place like this could have lots of cool things, like vintage oil cans or classic radiator grills. Oh! Maybe you have a motometer lying around, somewhere? Petroliana is really big these days."

"From...dumpsters?"

The only one in the party who was aware of precious time slipping away was Marcie. She raised her hand to get both of their attention, saying, "Uh, guys, before this conversation drifts any further towards _Better Dumps and Garbage_ , I need some information."

That seemed to snap Red out of his revelry, for the moment.

"Oh, yeah, sorry, Marcie," Red apologized. "What do you wanna know?"

"Do you have any more information about those car thieves you told me about when we met in jail that day?"

"Not really," Red shrugged. "Just what I told you that day. My aunt heard about some weird strangers who stole six cars from people. Always in deserted places, like empty roads, and only at night. I didn't think they would hit here, of all places, though."

"How did your aunt come by this information?" Marcie asked.

"Well, Aunt Hedda runs her own motorcycle repair shop," Red explained. "She meets a lot of gearheads there, and I guess they told her about it."

That sounded plausible to Marcie, so she continued. "I also heard from your boss's competition, Steve Powers, in his office. I'm thinking he might know more than he's letting on."

"Make sense," Red mused. "When all the guys around the garage heard about the thefts, they thought the same thing. The boss believes Steve's pretty shady, too, but so far he can't find any proof. Either that, or Steve's really good at covering it up."

"What do you think?"

"I don't know," he shrugged again. "It doesn't make any sense, though. Who'd wanna steal used cars from the lot? All the good stuff's in the showroom?"

"Hmm, that's a very good point, Red." Marcie admitted. "I'll have to look in on that! Thank for the info!"

"No problem," Red said. He glanced back at Daisy, happy to get back to flirting with the beauty. Then he wondered casually why she was with Marcie.

"Do you solve cases with her, too?" he flirtatiously asked Daisy.

Daisy laughed a little, self-consciously from that. " _Me?_ A detective? I don't know about that. I help Marcie out every now and again, but I don't think I'm _that_ good. Marcie is the one who's making a name for herself in Crystal Cove."

She gave her friend a knowing glance. "Even if she doesn't want to admit it, sometimes."

Red ignored the meaning behind the message sent to the now demure Marcie Fleach. He continued his patter.

"Maybe, but I'd feel so much better knowing that you were on the case, too," he said to her. Daisy's smile brought out his, very easily.

A tall, gangly blonde male walked out of the garage, saw Red, and called out, "Hey, Red, c'mon, you gotta finish up that oil change! You can get the girls' phone numbers later, dude!"

"Yeah, okay!" Herring called back.

With a sigh, Red walked quickly back to the service area, but turned his head to address the girls.

"Gotta go, guys!" Red exclaimed to them. "We'll get together, later. But make sure you  _solve_ this thing! I'm counting on you, or else we might all may be out of a job, along with our boss!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

 


	3. Chapter 3

Marcie split off from the afternoon crowds of students that surged out of Crystal Cove High when it let out.

Meandering through the school parking lot, she chanced to see Jason waiting by her car, looking a bit giddy.

"Hey, Jason, what's up?" she asked as she approached him.

"Marcie, guess what?" her friend asked in animated return. "The Hunter X forum lit up all last weekend and confirmed that all of my sweet HXM, that's Hunter X Merchandise to you, has gone up in value! I'm tempted to go straight to EPay, when I get home, just to see how much those scags'll pay for my stuff!"

Marcie gave her rotund friend a half-smile that held more pity that support, then she put her books in the back seat. Even among other geeks, he's geeky, she thought.

She slipped into the driver's seat and got comfortable, settling in, and putting the school day in the back of her mind.

"Congratulations, my little capitalist. You can tell me all about it on my way to Hedda Herring's motorcycle repair shop," said Marcie.

Jason, thankful for the lift, had to still ask her, as he got in beside her, "Why are you going there? Didn't that Red guy tell you everything?"

"Yeah," Marcie said, pulling out of the lot. "and so did his boss, Sam Mackey, when I went back to him and asked him what he saw when the cars were stolen. Aliens, he said."

Jason almost laughed. "Aliens? Aliens stole his cars?"

"Apparently, but in any case, the information Red gave me is all second hand. I'll have to ask the victims, like I did Mackey," she reasoned.

"Do you know where they are?" Jason asked.

"No," Marcie said. "Red said that they all talked to his aunt Hedda. Hopefully, they were all customers of hers and she has their addresses and phone numbers on file."

"Oh, okay."

Marcie moved into traffic and continued. "If all of what they say corroborates with what Mackey told me, then I should be that much closer to solving this mystery."

"Well, as long as you're giving lifts," Jason perked up, "can we celebrate over at Rude Pizza when you _do_ solve this mystery? Or, at least, swing by, even if you're only _close_ to solving it?"

Marcie gave chuckle and shook her head. "Jason, if it were up to you, you'd try to figure out the crime _only_ at Rude Pizza!"

"Of course!" Jason straightened, proud of his own logic. "That way, when I cracked the case, I wouldn't have far to go!"

The repair shop had all the visual charm of a gas station-turned-repair shop, which it was. It had "local small business" writ large all over its weathered facade, yet the small, open garage doors looked inviting enough when Marcie parked in the makeshift lot that had once held the erstwhile station's pumps.

Old, thin motorcycle tires were strung together to form a festoon over the shop's sign, identifying the place as "Hedda's Hot Rod and Motorcycle Repair," and like the garage at Mackey's dealership, Marcie was met by the brazen sounds of repair work being done.

The two teens left the car and entered the quieter end of the shop, then approached the counter.

Marcie saw the counter's bell and tapped it twice before a squat, sour-faced, crimson-haired woman in dirty coveralls waddled from a door in the back, and came towards them.

Her eyes swept over the two in critical flashes, running a long-used program of figuring out what a customer wanted before he or she ever utter their grievances, through her mind. She kept her gaze on Jason longer than he personally felt necessary or comfortable.

"Oh, you're a big boy, aren't ya," she surmised. "Let me guess. You rode your bike once too often, and ya blew out your suspension."

While Jason stood flustered and pink, Marcie stepped into the inquisition and said, calmly, "No."

"You wore out your tires," Hedda indelicately continued.

"No," Marcie answered for Jason.

"Bent your fork?"

"No."

"Killed your upholstery?"

"No!" Marcie answered, a bit more sternly than she may have wanted, but the scientist in her had never tolerated time being wasted in the pursuit of facts, and this guessing game was beginning to irk her somewhat.

"Well, what do ya want?" Hedda asked, also one for getting to the point.

Marcie centered herself, and began her questioning again with a newly-minted mild expression.

"Diagnostics and/or fat jokes, aside, ma'am, I'm wanted to ask you a few questions."

"What about, kid? I was in the middle of a brake job, before you rang the bell," said Miss Herring in a crotchety voice.

"Your nephew, Red-"

Hedda cut her off in frustration. "Ugh. What's my brother's son in jail for _this_ time? That knothead sheriff has got it in for my boy, y'know. It's clearly bully profiling. Jeez, throw your weight around a little in grade school and it follows you forever."

"Well, that explains why he was in the station that day," Marcie muttered to herself before getting back on track. "Uh, that's not why I'm here, Miss Herring."

Again, Hedda trained that judgmental, disdainful gaze on Marcie, attempting to get her own answers before the girl.

"Oh, I get it," the woman guessed again, and Marcie could hear the condescension in her tone lace her words, like the scrim of rotten oil on rain water. "Did he make fun of you, darlin'? Did he laugh at those weird specs, or that nasally, geeky voice of yours? I'm sorry, really, I am. He's a good boy, but I guess being around nerds and geeks all day might've made him a bit self-conscious."

Marcie stiffened inside. This woman was insufferable, and that was made evident in just minutes of their meeting. The girl greatly desired to teach this harridan a lesson in manners with common, household chemicals and some criminal imagination, but the siren song of the mystery forced her to hold her tongue.

"That's not it, ma'am," Marcie said flatly through hardened jaws, much to the silent amusement of Jason. Clearly, Miss Herring was an equal opportunity offender.

Stepping into the conversation with a chuckle, Jason said, diplomatically, "Uh, concern and/or nerd jokes, aside, ma'am, Marcie, here, would like to know who were the people you talked to about the stolen cars."

Actual concern flashed across the woman's eyes and her taunts disappeared in response.

"Does this have anything to do with my boy?" she asked.

Marcie, gratefully for the verbal ceasefire, explained. "No, ma'am. We'd just like to question those people who talked to you, so we can see if they all saw the same thing."

"About the carjackings?"

"Yes, the car dealership where your nephew works was hit last week, and we need to know as much information as we can to solve this thing," the girl said.

"Ha! That makes sense," Hedda said, snarkily. "If that no-account Sheriff Stone is on the case, chances are, you kids _might_ have a better shot at solving it. Well...I suppose it wouldn't hurt to help ya out, skinny."

Marcie bristled at that, but maintained her decorum while Jason snickered.

"C'mon over to my office, and I'll give you their information," Hedda bade them.

She opened the door built into the counter to let them through, and then led them through a second door marked "Office."

"Skinny," Jason muttered amusedly to Marcie, as he followed her. "That's a good one."

"Yeah, a laugh riot. Now, try to keep up..." Marcie replied in low tones. Then she added, " _chubby_."

Jason gave a hurt expression from the teen's sting. "Y'know, words can hurt, Marcie."

* * *

Rude Pizza was eye-catching in its cool, checkerboard facade, and the owners of that fine chain of restaurants, Rudolph Boynton, aka Ska front man Rude Boy, and his band and business partners, the Skatastics, liked it that way.

So did Marcie, as she stepped in through the front doors, her head bopping in slow time to a song by the Not Ordinarys.

The interior proudly displayed the eatery's Ska roots, from the geometric, neo-50's, two-tone decor, to the framed photos of the genre's greatest bands and singers on the walls above the padded booths.

Once inside, Marcie quickly studied the faces of the patrons seated in the restaurant's black and white dining area. He wasn't there.

She then peered at the dancers moving in place by the raised DJ balcony overlooking the small, convenient dance floor set up at the far end of the building. He wasn't there, as well.

She walked further inside, and finally spotted a hungry Red Herring picking up his order of a whole pizza pie from the counter, and walking over to his two-tone table.

As he sat down, Marcie approached and sat in the seat opposite his.

"Big lunch," she said, assessing the size of the pie.

"Big guy. I eat here all the time." Red reasoned after devouring a slice, then asked, "So, how's it going with the case?"

"Well, I went to see your aunt at her shop," Marcie said. "Strong family resemblance, by the way, and I managed to get the names, addresses and phone numbers of all the car theft victims. I guess they were customers, after all."

"Figures that they would be," Red said, chomping on another slice. "I hoped Aunt Hedda's info helped."

"It did," she told him. "I went to their houses, and they all pretty much said the same thing. Some loud, bright alien ship flew towards their cars, managed to corner it, blind the passengers temporarily, and then, make off with the car. The only other thing that connects them was that all of the thefts always happened on deserted roads, and in the middle of the night."

"Have you checked out Powers, yet?"

"Not yet," said Marcie.

"You oughta. That guy's as slick as it gets," he said. "I wouldn't put it past him to try something dirty, like sabotage Mr. Mackey's new commercial."

Marcie perked up at this. "Commercial?"

"Yeah. He said that they were going to start shooting sometime this week to tell everybody about the new sale coming up."

Marcie took a moment to digest this new data. "That's good to know. If Powers does use this as a possible opportunity to disrupt the shoot, it could be seen as a personal attack on Mackey's business, and it could incriminate him. It's not much, but it's better than nothing."

Red gulped another slice. "Like I said, I wouldn't put it past the guy to try it."

Coming from the back, possibly the dance area, the two noticed a lanky boy wearing the obligatory pork pie hat that signified the Ska fashion of an actual Rude Boy, walking over to their table. Red sized him up during that moment and considered him not worth noticing further.

The teenager leaned over towards Marcie's side of the table, and said, as easy as he pleased, "Hey! Skank?"

Marcie was inwardly amazed that someone as bulky, yet as muscular, as Red, could move so fast.

Red exploded out of his seat before he took another bite of pizza, and with that same shocking swiftness, reached out and scooped up a beefy hand-sized gathering of shirt from the hapless teen's chest, and lifted him off of his loafers.

"Hey, pal," Red growled. "Watch who you're callin' a skank! She may not be much to look at, but she's with me! Got it?"

Marcie, feeling almost every eye in the dining area zeroing in on her, ignored the backhanded defense to her honor, and whispered urgently to Red, "Red! Put him down!"

"Why?" Red asked, running on a bellyful of pizza and righteous indignation. "You heard what he called you."

"He was asking me to _dance!_ "

Red looked genuinely confused from that admission.

"Huh?" he muttered.

The teen, taking the opportunity of the cessation of Red's attack, stuttered, "Y-Yeah, dude! This p-place plays Ska music! The dance is called "The Skank!""

Red ignored the terror-stricken boy, and asked an embarrassed Marcie, "Is that true? You're not just trying to save this pencilneck, are ya?"

Marcie, trying to hide her face under one of her palms, said in a low voice, so as not to disrupt the patrons eating, which she knew was already too late, "Yes, to both. Now, will you please let him go?"

Again, Red looked lost. He glanced over at his still upheld captive with a look and a growl of warning, then let the boy drop back to his feet, which he then used to walk briskly back to the dance floor.

With the scene over, the other customers turned back to their business, while Red sat back down to his meal, staring at it, and chewing silently and mechanically, looking for all the world, like the awkwardest, most self-conscious bull in the pasture.

"You say you eat here all the time," Marcie said to him, puzzled. "and you don't even know what "skank" means?"

Red, still sheepishly studying what was left of his pizza, muttered simply, "They've got good pizza, here."

Marcie stood up from the table, relieved that the cultural faux pas was over. With a sigh, she said, "Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I'm going over to the crime scenes today. Hopefully, I'll find something."

She turned, and instead of leaving the place, headed further into the restaurant. Something that Red had noticed, once he stopped his guilty chewing.

"Where're ya going?" he asked.

"Little Chemist's Room," she answered. "By the way, I kinda like this place, too, and for more than just the pizza. Try not to hospitalize anyone when I get back, huh?"

* * *

The Clue Cruiser stopped by the side of the road that connected the town to the winding, picturesque Pacific Coast Highway, indicated by one of the theft victims she had questioned earlier.

Traffic was fortunately light for that time of day, allowing Marcie, with Jason and his metal detector, in tow, to comb the area.

Ignoring the odd jibes to the two from passing cars that the metal detector would be better served at the beach, they swept the location described by the former car owner where her property was last seen on Earth.

Apart from the skid marks made when the woman was forced to the side of the road, there was very little evidence left to collect.

Except for a stain on the asphalt Marcie had happened to notice, and walked over to. A considerably wide one, too wide to come from a car unless it was badly damaged in its undercarriage before it was somehow spirited away in the night.

Marcie knelt over the broad discolored area and took out a vial of purified water, and a small square of cotton cloth. She dabbed the cloth against the open vial until it was sufficiently wet enough, and then she began to dab the cloth against the stained ground.

After a few presses, she looked at the surface of the now darkened cloth, satisfied.

Jason reported that the detector found no metallic remains of the car, or upon visual inspection of the area, no plastic remains, either. Except for the wayward tire marks, this location was clean.

Well, almost so. Marcie held up the soiled cloth. This was better than nothing, so far.

After spending more time driving, checking the breadth and width of the road that served and stretched past the Creationex World Headquarters Building, and both arteries coming to Crystal Cove and going out of it, and finding no clues in any of those places, the duo headed to the next closest crime scene in the area, which was further up the incoming artery.

Setting up her car's emergency roadside accoutrements, Marcie created a relatively safe zone to search through, however the traffic that coasted along the cliffside still kept them on their collective toes.

This time, it was Jason and his detector, who found the next clue, nestled among some small, loose mountain stone by the road. It was tiny and electronic, yet it didn't look like it was a component from a car, when his practiced eye came across it. Other than the fact that it had a magnetic base to it, Jason said that he couldn't tell Marcie more until he brought it to his workshop at home.

On the outskirts of town were where the farmland sprawled. Vast, scenic, utilitarian fields where produce, in this particular instance, corn, reigned, and farmers and their orderly lifestyles still existed, even in this new century.

And where, on a solitary road, the last crime scene was created.

The soft sound of tires crunching gravel was a soothing song to Marcie, compared to the otherwise annoying sound of Jason going on and on again, the whole trip, about his Hunter X merchandise, and how much he planned to get for it.

She reluctantly parked the car when they arrived at the spot by the road, described as best he could, by the last car theft victim. She and Jason, then stepped out and began their sweep, spotting, without too much trouble, the disturbed gravel and tire tracks where the missing car swerved to a halt, a few feet from the Clue Cruiser.

"Count yourself lucky if there's anything out here to find," Jason muttered while he scanned the center of the road with his detector. "It's been slim pickings on the clue front."

Marcie sat against the curved hood of the Cruiser in thought, staring out at the remote distance of the presently empty road.

' _Aliens_ , _'_ she thought with a wistful smile. _'I wonder what V will say when I tell her about this. I, for one, don't like dismissing their existence out of hand...but unearthly carjackers?'_

She sighed inwardly at that. Thinking about Velma. She hadn't been doing that as much as she'd like these days. Busy, busy, busy. Too busy to think of her, but wasn't that what she had wanted at one time?

Marcie looked at the vanishing point in the farmland's horizon, connecting the loneliness of this setting with the absence of Velma, and felt within her a welcome pang of melancholy, a liberating, humanizing agony Marcie fully embraced again.

It hurt, true enough. It ached to hold on to her memory, but it was a proper pain that, with a bittersweet smile, Marcie resolved not to deaden herself to again with activities.

"I wouldn't worry," she said to Jason, standing again. "I'm beginning to understand that with clues, like with life, sometimes, it's not about the quantity, but the quality."

She walked ahead of her car, over to the wayward tracks that angled towards the cornfield. She then turned around to survey the search area. Time to get started.

"I'll check near the tracks," she told Jason. "See if you can sweep your detector over here, near the corn stalks. Maybe these aliens dropped something we can use."

"Okay."

The sun was noticeably lower, now. Afternoon would be evening soon enough, and the need to find something before it became too dark to search was becoming more pressing.

With Marcie inspecting the graveled earth and Jason probing the stalks closest to the road, the search proved to be both brisk and unsatisfactory. Nothing could be found or extracted for lab testing later.

Marcie stood up and dusted her knees off. "Well, there's not much here. Just the tire tracks. If these aliens were nice enough to use a truck, they could have left some tracks behind that would have made this much easier."

"Wouldn't be much of a mystery, then," Jason said, taking his ease by the cornfield. He then caught the quick glance of Marcie at his direction.

"I'm just saying..." Jason defended, but Marcie shook her head.

"No. Did you hear that?" she asked.

Jason cocked his head to listen, but heard nothing but the wind through the swaying stalks.

"What? My stomach?" he asked. "It's gotta mind of its own sometimes. I haven't had anything to eat since you dragged me on this Easter Egg hunt, and _they're_ starting to sound pretty tasty, right about now!"

Marcie was about to comment on that, when the sound of something heavy and fast-moving came from the stalks, and a tall, muscular cat-like being leaped out of the cover of the cornfield, landing past Jason in a huge blur of sprung action.

Jason squeaked, dropped his metal detector to the ground, and flew away in a startled leap that almost rivaled the creature's in terms of speed and distance.

He scrambled over to the nearby VW, hiding by the side of the car furthest from the beast-man, keeping a fearful watch on it, and making sure that the Clue Cruiser was between it and him, as it stalked, two-leggedly, towards a cautious Marcie.

To her credit, Marcie didn't follow her friend's action to break and run, but she did cautiously back away slowly from the advancing cat-man.

Towering a good head and a half above her, the felinoid sported a mane cut to the style of a Mohawk, that was combed back and flowed down past his broad shoulders. He wore only a sash, a loose-covering tunic that suggested some sort of military uniform, a necklace with a large, red gem handing down, and a belt with a scabbard attached.

" _Two_ aliens?" Marcie managed to say, incredulously. "What in the name of Madame Currie is going on?"

"Great! It's an invasion!" Jason said, barely holding his panic in check by the side of her car. "C'mon, Marcie! Let's get out of here!"

"Wait!" she exclaimed. "Everyone I questioned said that the aliens that took their cars looked like Grays, grayish skin, large heads and black eyes. Even Mr. Mackey said they looked like that. So who is this one?"

"Tell you what," Jason suggested. "You throw me the car keys, and then you can go ask him!"

In a gesture of peace, Marcie slowly raised her hand, and when the cat alien stopped his advance, she stopped her slow retreat.

"I only want to talk to you," she said to him carefully. "You might have information that I need."

A tilt of the head and a low growl was all the reply the felinoid gave. Since no attack came after it, Marcie thought it was safe enough to continue.

"What are you? Do you know who's stealing cars? Do you know where their ship is?"

The cat alien seemed to ponder the questions for a moment. Then he opened his dark, dangerous maw, and the gem in his necklace flickered to radiance.

"Heed me, Human! I am the Sheldath Commander, sworn enemy of the Voxellan," the cat's voice came, strangely, from the gem. "I regret that your species has been caught in the middle of our feud, but if you leave now, you will not be harmed."

"Sheldath? Not Voxellan?" Marcie asked, trying to understand what he told her. Enemies? Feuds? This mystery was getting more complicated. "Do you know where they are?"

"Leave now!"

"But-"

With only a growl to warn her, Marcie ducked as the Sheldath reached for the sword hanging from his belt, and with a smooth, lashing move, whipped the sword out towards her head.

Already in a low crouch, Marcie rolled past the commander, just as he made a downward slash that buried the sword point into the dirt instead of in her back.

Jason peeked up from his spot by the driver's side of the car when he saw Marcie run pell-mell in his direction, the Sheldath calmly stalking her.

"Don't lead him here!" he screamed, as he ran around to the other side of the car, Marcie closely following him. Soon both Humans fearfully watched the alien, making sure that they kept equidistant from him around the car.

"Anti-social, much?" Jason muttered.

"Apparently," Marcie concurred, still keeping her eyes on their attacker. "So much for First Contact. Listen, I'll give you the car keys, then I'll distract him. You get in the car and start it up, then I'll jump in, so we can leave. Okay?"

She turned to see Jason's acknowledgement, and instead found him running as fast as his bulk could allow him down the road.

"Jason!" she called out to his departing back. "Come back here, you two-ton turncoat!"

Fretting, Marcie turned her attention back to the alien. Alone, in the middle of nowhere, there was every chance that she and Jason could be dispatched, and left to be found much later by the farm's owners, their broken bodies providing some unneeded fertilization for the cornfield.

The Sheldath grew tired of this game of Keep-Away, and bolted around the car to overtake Marcie before she could get to the other side of the Cruiser.

Reaching inside her jacket, Marcie plucked out what she thought was a knock-out capsule from its inner pocket. Throwing it hard against the gravel by the cat's feet, both were surprised to see the ground frost, with thick ice spreading out from the impact zone, freezing and hardening some nearby corn stalks.

Confused, the commander jumped back from the ice, but didn't judge where his sword arm was. The blade deflected off the rear passenger door, cutting a noticeable chip out of its white paint job.

Whatever low opinion the Sheldath may have had about Humans in the past, from the look he saw in Marcie's eyes, which turned as cold as the ice she produced, he would have had to reevaluate that assumption.

He actually paused cautiously, as Marcie zeroed in on him like a hunter.

"To heck with First Contact!" she yelled. "You nicked my car, Simba!"

Retribution was foremost on her mind, and with a glance at the frozen corn stalks, armored in ice, Marcie had found the instruments needed to extract it from the commander.

A fast, low thrust kick freed both makeshift weapons from the earth. They toppled like thin trees into her waiting hands. She brandished them like two swords, and with a leap over the icy ground, she engaged the surprised Sheldath.

Sword clashed with hard vegetation, with both combatants gaining ground with every riposte, thrust and swing, and losing ground with every parry, defensive backstep and failed feint.

The Sheldath had the strength of arm to make telling blows, but Marcie had speed and, with alert observation, agility, either dodging swings outright, or deflecting them with one cornstalk, and striking out with the other.

Angered at not being able to finish this contest quickly, the Sheldath took a deceptive step back, to draw Marcie into a trap, and then brought his sword up for a fatal downstroke onto the top of her head.

Marcie brought both stalks up in a cross pattern and caught the, fortunately, lighter-made sword in the middle.

Although they were frozen completely through, the stalks were now becoming battered and worn, and the Sheldath could see that.

He bore his weight down against Marcie, working the sword back and forth, to cut deeper into the stalks, and finally bury itself into the Human's skull.

A tactic that Marcie, fretfully, could see would happen unless she thought of something, now.

So, she kicked him in the groin. Hard.

The Sheldath Commander doubled over, with a yelp, and painfully backed off, keeping his sword raised defensively, to force Marcie from taking advantage.

Glancing around for an avenue of escape, he bounded back into the high, protective cornfield. Marcie quickly gave chase. She couldn't lose this precious source of information.

She ran blindly through a storm of green leaves, her feet crashing loudly around her. So desperate was she to interrogate him, and break this case wide open, that it wouldn't be for another few seconds until she realized that she couldn't hear him anymore, and worse, by running inside such a confining and confusing place, it would have been the perfect place for the alien to ambush her, like the big cat he was.

She turned around, finding a wall of plant growth closing off her way. She then slowly walked back through a path that she had to more remember than see, to find her way back.

And it was there, up ahead, hanging on the broad leaf of one of a myriad of cornstalks, and flashing against the sun, that her case took another strange turn...

Jason waddled in what he hoped was the direction back to town. He hated to leave Marcie behind to be ripped apart by some imposing, alien militiaman, he reasoned. But what could he do? He was a thinker, not a fighter!

He gratefully turned to the sound of a car coming up the road, flagging it down with flabby arms. When he saw Marcie's stern face looking back at him, he was sorely tempted to keep walking.

The lies came fast and thick when he approached her. "Oh, Marcie! Hi! I couldn't find any help out here, so I wanted to go back into town to find some."

"I'm going to get you a backbone for Christmas," Marcie told him calmly.

Jason bowed his head. "Okay, I'm sorry I bailed on you, Marcie, but do you have any idea what would my mom do to me if I came home dead?"

"Get in the car, Jellyfish," Marcie ordered him. He meekly complied.

"What happened back there?" he asked after the car started down the road again.

"I was forced to speak to him in a language that he understood, but I lost him in the cornfields," Marcie said.

"If he was the only one who knew anything, then the mystery's a bust, huh?" he asked sympathetically.

Marcie held up a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses that shined against the dying sun while she drove back to town.

"Not quite," she said.


	4. Chapter 4

The sun was descending, giving a picturesque setting to the expanse of the Powers Auto Complex, an acres-wide facility that included a car detailing and paint center with its service center, which was considerably larger that Mackey's.

With a gleaming fleet of new model cars in the wide lot, Marcie's VW convertible, with its Wacky Racers logo on the rear engine hood, looked woefully out of place, parked in customers' lot nearby.

The secretary leaned with a bored air over her intercom. "Mr. Powers, there's someone to see you, sir."

"Is it a guy?" the voice asked in a tinny squawk, then added more lecherously, "or a lady?"

The secretary rolled her eyes heavenward. "She says her name is Marcie Fleach," she answered, deadpan.

"Never heard of her," Powers dismissed. "Ask her if she wants to buy a car."

The secretary glanced at the girl blankly and asked, "Do you wanna buy a car?"

"I already have a car," Marcie said.

The secretary leaned over the intercom. "She already has a car, Mr. Powers."

"Then show her the door!" Powers snapped. "I'm the number one car dealer in Crystal Cove for a reason. Hard work! I have time for customers, not characters who just wander through the front door!"

Marcie walked over to the closed office door, noticing that the secretary made no attempt of warning her off, and faced it. "Mr. Powers, I was at Mr. Mackey's dealership last weekend. You and I met in his office, remember?"

There was a silent moment, then Powers called through the door. "Oh, yeah! The nerd girl! C'mon in!"

Marcie, sympathizing with the long-suffering secretary, rolled her eyes, and enter the office.

Immediately, Marcie looked a little dismayed with the interior. It looked like less like the office of a dealership president, and more like the lounge of a 1970's bachelor's pad.

She walked further in and took a seat in front of the desk Powers sat behind. He may have been a tacky bore, which was certainly reflected in his taste in decor, but based on the amount of paperwork she saw on the desk's surface, she had to admit that Powers was not sitting around watching the grass grow.

Powers gave her a grin that was equal parts insincere, equal parts apologetic.

"Hey, sorry about that," he said. "I'm the number one car dealer in Crystal Cove for a reason. Hard work."

"Yes, you have time for customers, not characters who just wander through the front door," Marcie added. "I heard. Mr. Mackey would disagree with that assessment, however."

"Eh, whatever," Powers shrugged. He opened a drawer in the desk and began fishing around the odds and ends within. A moment later, he plucked out a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses.

"My old man used to tell me, "You should always look better going out, than you did coming in." Here ya go."

He offered the glasses from over the desk, then stopped halfway when Marcie reached into her wool jacket and plucked out a similar pair.

"That's alright, Mr. Powers," she said to him. "I have my own."

"Where did you get those?" Powers asked.

"From a cornfield a few miles from town while I was looking for clues into the mystery of those missing cars."

Powers looked suddenly amused. "You were serious when you told Mackerel that you'd solve this thing?"

"Quite so, Mr. Powers," Marcie said soberly. "Anyway, I was examining these glasses on my way to you, and I must say, they look very expensive."

Powers gave a another grin that, unlike his previous one, was wholly honest, if also a bit too proud.

"Believe it or not, they are. My old man used to tell me, "Always try to look like a million bucks, and people'll _treat_ you like a million bucks,"" he pontificated.

"I don't suppose your father was a tall, furry, cat-like alien swinging a three foot sword?" Marcie asked him. Powers had hoped that her expression would have changed risibly, but it didn't.

"A what?" he said, almost laughing, himself.

"I only ask because me and a friend ran into said alien in that same cornfield. He attacked me, and when I gave chase, he apparently was in possession of a pair of your sunglasses, because I found them in the cornfield after I lost him."

Powers leaned back in his plush chair, and shrugged. "Well, I don't know who this guy is."

"If I may ask," Marcie asked. "Is it common for you to give away such pricey eyewear?"

"Sure. I give away my sunglasses to potential customers all the time. When they see that I can afford to give 'em away like party favors, then they know that I make serious money, because I sell serious cars. Maybe Leo got that pair from me because he wanted to trade in his flying litter box for a Powers automobile. Can't say I blame him."

"Mr. Powers, can you verify that you were working here, and not at the cornfield?" Marcie asked him directly.

Again, the president looked ready to laugh. "You really think I'm running around the farmlands chasing nerds?"

"Mr. Powers-"

He raised his hand to cut her off.

"Tell you what. I'm gonna ask _you_ a question, because I sincerely don't take you seriously as a so-called detective," he declared with dark cynicism while he surreptitiously reached under his desk and pressed a silent alarm button.

"Are you here because Macaroni sent you to shake me up?" he asked her. "If so, then you better go back to that used car salesman and tell him that he's wasting his time."

"Mr. Mackey didn't send me here, Mr. Powers," Marcie pressed, secretly hoping for a swift confession, simply due to the fact that she had, what she believed, was conclusive evidence on him. "but I would still like to ask you where you were an hour ago? Were you here working, or were you somewhere else?"

Marcie watched Powers' eyes flick from her to something behind her. She glanced over her shoulder to see two security guards move through the room to flank behind her . She turned her attention back to the now-smug Powers.

Leaning forward again, Powers gave his last grin to her, as cool as the early evening that was beginning to settle over town.

"Hmm, I'll answer that question," he told her, as the guards allowed her to stand before walking her towards the doorway. "right after you tell me where in the middle of the street my guards will drop kick you."

Before Marcie was led out of the office, she managed to say to him, calmly, "You do know that by doing this, it makes you more of a suspect."

"And I _suspect_ that Macaroon will have to try way harder than this to get me out of the dealership game," Powers said, as Marcie was escorted out. "Be sure tell him that, won't you?"

* * *

"I didn't think those goons would _actually_ drop kick me," Marcie groused, as she shuffled on her now-padded stool in her lab, analyzing the chemical sample she took on the road earlier. The pain was subsiding, but her rear-end still remembered the kick.

The archaic spectroscope hummed low in its corner of the counter, breaking down the prepared sample Marcie fed it, while she ruminated on Powers.

He felt like a sure thing, and maybe he still was. The fact that he was so defensive and hostile to her towards the end, made the percentage of his guilt climb slowly, yet steadily in her mind.

Marcie suddenly frowned. She wasn't thinking like scientist, but like a normal person, she mentally berated herself. Even if the man was guilty, at present, it was an assumption based more on emotion than empirical data, and she knew that was less than useless to her. She needed something far more concrete than sunglasses to connect him to the thefts.

A beep sounded from the spectroscope, its analysis finished.

"Okay, old timer, let's see what you got," Marcie said to it, as she leaned over to study the findings on its green screen.

"Hmm, oils, silicones, butanol, some esters. It looks like hydraulic fluid. That figures. There was so much of it by the road," she muttered. "That car must have been leaking like a sieve. Hmm, particulate contamination, too. You'd think for a new car that hadn't seen too many miles on it, it, and its hydraulic fluid, would be in better shape. All right, let's see what else is in there."

She finished reading the last of the chemical compositions. Then she froze in confusion.

"What a minute!" Marcie said to herself. "That didn't come from a car! That _is_ curious!"

Marcie smiled deeply. The analytical side of her was pleased again. Through simply, thorough examination, more crucial data was rewarded to her. Emotion was the enemy to the thinker. It always was, and once it was taken out of the deductive process, and good ol' Scientific Method stood in its place, more avenues of possibility opened to her.

"Okay, I've just made an observation with this chemical analysis, but since I still haven't proven that Powers is guilty or innocent, I must still follow along that track, connecting what I found, with him, and proposing an hypothesis," Marcie stated, directly. "To wit, he may have something to do with the fluid I analyzed. To test that hypothesis, I'll have to go back to Powers' place of business."

She picked up her cell phone from the counter, and dialed. A feminine voice answered.

"Hey, Daisy," said Marcie. "Are you busy tonight?"

* * *

The Powers Auto Complex stood quiet, dark and still, like a museum at midnight, although it wasn't that late. Only the powerful lights surrounding the lot proper were on, illuminating almost the whole of the property and the boulevard beyond.

In the shade of one side of the office building stood a row of dumpsters that quietly thumped. If the patrolling security guards, who were lay unconscious on the concrete walks of the property, had heard the sounds, Marcie and Daisy would have been promptly caught.

As it were, both girls popped their heads up out of the large containers, penlights in their teeth, discarded paperwork in their hands, and their eyes scanning for sentries.

"I don't know how a car dealership is run, myself," Daisy whispered. "but I don't think we're going to find anything in here, Marcie."

Marcie perused the latest, crumpled papers in her hand. Admittedly, she had no idea how to run a dealership, either, so she tried focusing on things that didn't look businesslike, like strange purchases, or suspicious omissions, anything that could be amiss, anything that could incriminate Powers.

But she could find nothing that set off any red flags in her mind.

"It looks like it." Marcie glumly admitted. "I'm sorry, Daisy. I was so sure that Powers had something to do with that attack at the cornfield. That we had gotten too close, and he was trying to scare us off. I guess it was a fool's errand, after all."

"That's one of the cool things about what I do," Daisy reasoned. "One rarely gets anything in a dumpster one expects."

"Zen and the Art of Dumpster Diving," Marcie quipped. " So you're saying that one should go in with the idea of not knowing what he or she will find?"

"Sure. That way, you're never disappointed."

"Words to live by. C'mon, let's get out of here."

As quietly as they could, the duo slowly climbed out of the containers, and then clung as close to the office building's walls as possible, to stay deep in the shadows.

"I hate having to crawl across all of that gravel to get back to the car," Marcie fretted, getting on her knees. "It just about killed my knees getting here."

"Y'know, I just thought of something," Daisy said while she knelt, ready to led the crawl out of the protective shade of that side of the building. "We haven't seen a single guard since we came here. That's really strange."

Marcie stopped to regard that. It had been fairly easy to get in and snoop around this long with interruption. If it was luck, it was bound to finite, as any precious resource would be.

"You're right. Let's hope they're having a really long lunch break. We'll just sneak out and not disturb them. They work hard enough."

Daisy and Marcie moved ahead, gradually getting closer to the edge of the shadows that demarcated the boundary to the brightly lit lot, and the cars they would have to slink among and past on their way out onto the sidewalk. Once there, they could make it down the street to Marcie's parked car.

"What a way to spend a school night," Marcie whispered.

Daisy tilted her head in Marcie's direction while she still crawled. "It's no big deal. Trust me, you'll have worse times. Anything to get out of doing homework, I say."

Then she stopped.

Marcie noticed the hold-up. "What's wrong? Is something-"

She followed her friend's silent gaze up at the tall, jumpsuited Voxellan, pointing a fiercely technological-looking gun over their heads.

A sound from behind Marcie made her turn her head to see another Voxellan flanking her, brandishing a similar weapon. In such a vulnerable position, both figuratively and literally, Marcie sincerely wished she were home tackling homework.

"Small galaxy, huh?" she asked the alien from over her shoulder.

The girls wailed as their combined vision failed in a painful explosion of harsh, ravaging light.

* * *

Marcie found it odd that it would be so hot wherever it was she and Daisy were taken to. Sweat rolled down her body without pause, and she recalled that the last time she had perspired so heavily, it was during her face-off with Joanne in the sauna. _Why was it so hot here?_

"Hey, Mr. Spaceman!" she heard Daisy call out. "It's burning up in here. Don't you aliens believe in AC?"

Marcie felt that her eyes were open, however, she could see nothing. Her sense of orientation still worked, however, and she could feel that she was sitting upright in a chair.

"Daisy?" she called out, and her voice sounded muffled.

"Marcie?"

From the muted direction of Daisy's voice, she realized that she was facing her, and not too far away. Reflexively, she tried to move her arms, and found that her wrists were bound, as were her ankles, by what felt like tape. She could feel the heat of her own breath against her face. Something was deflecting it back. A mask?

The sensation of something, a hood, was pulled from her head abruptly, and the unaccustomed light of a room struck her eyes hard, reminding her of the Voxellan attack earlier.

Marcie blinked back the painful correction of her vision, and eventually could make out Daisy, similarly bound in a chair, and Voxellan, at least four of them.

She swept her clearing sight around the width of what was a wide, well-lit chamber, and she could see that she and Daisy were sitting in its center.

In the middle of the floor, she could see a long, faint trail of something dark running along in parallel lines. Next to the trails, she could make out small dots of various colors.

The only other distinguishing feature to the room, she noticed, were the strange panels that protruded from the walls, and something that looked like coiled, metal tubing in the center of each of the panels.

Daisy, already unhooded by the aliens, replied, "This is really getting really freaky, Marcie."

"I would agree. Those are the Voxellans, the alien car thieves," Marcie explained. "I wonder what they were doing in Powers' dealership, though."

"Maybe we caught them in the middle of a heist," Daisy suggested. "They were probably going to steal more cars, when we got the drop on them."

"Looks more like they got the drop on us, if anything," corrected Marcie, watching the extraterrestrials begin to leave the room.

Daisy noticed one of the Voxellan still in the room, waiting by one of the strange walls for the others to leave through the reinforced doorway before he would.

"Hey! What is this place? Where are we?" she asked him.

"Why are you stealing cars?" Marcie quickly asked, before any avenue of information would be closed to her. "What are you going to do to them?"

The Voxellan stared at her with dark, wide eyes. He looked at the wall he was standing near, patted one of the odd panels, looked back at the two girls, and then shook his head mournfully.

With that, he soon left the room, and closed the reinforced door behind them, leaving the girls to their worried thoughts.

"What do we do, now?" asked Daisy, trying to move her taped limbs, more for effect, since she knew she couldn't actually free herself, as well.

"Don't worry, Daisy," Marcie told her, wishing she was as confident as she tried to sound. "I'll come up with something."

She looked down and studied the tape around her arms.

"Looks like shipping tape. Pretty strong," Marcie muttered to herself. "If I can get into my jacket pocket, I can find something to cut or burn this off."

Either out of curiosity, or out of a need to keep her mind off of her predicament, Daisy asked Marcie, "Like what?"

"Well, I can use my insta-ice to freeze it," said Marcie. "or my acid to burn it. My Swiss Army Knife could cut it, and then afterwards, I'll take that door apart, so we can get out of here."

That sounded like a plan to Daisy. "I hope so, and why is it so warm in here? It's like Daisy Soup under my clothes."

"I hadn't noticed," Marcie said, looking down at her chair. "Rats! Metal. I can't break it."

Daisy watched Marcie fidget and scheme in her chair. If the younger girl, with all of her brains, couldn't figure a way out of their problem, it didn't look as if Daisy could come up with anything on the spot, either.

She tried to pull her arm up off the arm of the chair again, with no success. So, with that done, all she could do was watch Marcie, and wonder why the room kept getting warmer.

Marcie stopped her thought experiments to notice the rise in temperature, as well. Did someone turn on the heater in the building? Why? If the Voxellan had left them there while they went off to do their crimes, who was in the building besides the two of them, and could they be contacted?

She chanced to see past Daisy's shoulder to the far wall behind her. The coils inside the panels that were built into it were becoming easier to see, and her concern jumped to a new level when the room suddenly grew hotter, still.

"Marcie, what are those things in the walls?" Daisy asked, noticing the glowing panels, her concern rising with the heat.

Then it dawned on Marcie, her stomach and feet inversely chilling as the room kept heating up.

"Um, Daisy, don't be alarmed, but I think I know where we are."

"You do? Where?"

Marcie looked down to the floor to what she had seen earlier, her friend following her gaze.

"Well," she explained calmly while the room became more and more uncomfortable. "judging from the apparent tire tracks and the drops of paint on the floor..."

Marcie looked up to regard the now glowing panels in the walls. "And the heating elements built into the walls raising the room's temperature at a frightening rate, I have no choice but to conclude that we're in an auto paint drying room."

Daisy stopped panicking long enough to ponder at the strangeness of their location.

"An auto paint drying room?" Daisy slowly asked, incredulous.

"Yes," Marcie maintained. "Essentially, an oven."

"Oven? You mean they want to cook us?"

"These alien don't strike me as man-eaters, exactly," said Marcie. "I do think they want to finish us off, however, with heat prostration. Pretty clever, actually. No mess. Well, except for the nausea."

"Congratulate them, later," Daisy said, her breath becoming more labored. "We've got to get out of here!"

"Right."

The heat in the room now rose to the point where it felt like a spirit of pressure and pain caressing and haunting the girls.

Marcie fought through the assaulting headache to think, but only the symptoms of heat stroke filled her mind. Headache, fever, hot and dry skin, and rapid pulse, leading to delirium and coma.

Oh, and the nausea. I almost forgot, she thought as she looked to the panels, themselves, as a possible key to their release, thinking that she could sidle up to one, and get just close enough for its heat to melt the tape.

But, in the end, she knew that was foolish. The heat was so high, now, that she couldn't possibly hope to get close enough before she was knocked out.

And still the wall panels poured more heat into the room, stealing their collective breaths, with time ticking away to an agonizing death.

Fearfully, Marcie looked around for any sign of salvation, and instead, saw Daisy weakly drum her free fingers against the arms of her chair, vainly trying to hold back the fear.

Marcie's head slumped to one side, as her pulse began to ramp up, forcing her to choose to mentally monitor her symptoms in a useless bid to try to counter them internally, or to press on through the disabilities and figure a way out.

A pang of concern for Daisy made Marcie look back to her again. Daisy's head hung low, her breathing was shallow, and her hands were still.

Despair was creeping up Marcie's spine. Death was close. And then suddenly, a thunderbolt of hope lanced through her, and she was reborn.

Daisy's hands were moving!

_Their hands were free!_

"Daisy! I have an idea!" Marcie gasped as loud as he was able without passing out. A moan from her friend told her that she had heard her.

Marcie, with effort, stood up on her bound feet, hunched by nature of the chair, and hopped carefully towards Daisy. If she lost balance and fell, the plan wouldn't work, and they would surely die.

Daisy, hearing the grunts from the approaching Marcie, lifted her head slowly, and asked, "Wha...What are you...doing, Marcie?"

Marcie continued to cautiously hop until she reached the front of Daisy and one of her chair's arms.

"Lift your hand up. I don't want to crush it," Marcie wheezed to her.

Daisy weakly complied, as Marcie carefully rotated herself, and finally sat with her facing perpendicular to Daisy, one of her chair's arms in front of Daisy's, with Daisy's hand raised, palm up, and out of the way.

"Now what?" Daisy asked feebly.

"Now..."Marcie weakly answered. "you ruin your manicure. Use your hand to take off my tape."

Daisy gave a limp smile before her hand came down and fingers started probing for the ends of the strips of tape to pull loose.

When that failed to produce results, she felt around Marcie's arm for a new place of attack, and found one.

Although the tape was wrapped securely around Marcie's forearm, binding it to the arm of the chair, the tape itself didn't conform to the shape of both the forearm and chair arm, and there was a tiny gap between it and the two arms, making the tape over it, weaker.

"Sorry, if I scratch you up," Daisy apologized.

Marcie shrugged. "Go for it."

Daisy hooked her fingers and bore her nails down like claws against the tape on the side between the two arms. Nails found purchase between individual tape strips, allowing Daisy to pull them apart with strong fingers, weakening the overall bonds even more.

Occasionally, the fingers would miss and the long nails would dig into flesh, causing Marcie to wince.

But Daisy pressed on. It was a duel between her and the stubborn strips, and they were not going to give up Marcie willingly, as evidenced, when her nails began to break.

Marcie looked down past the thin, red lines in her forearm where the nails did their damage, and saw that Daisy was starting to have a hard time of it, and needed help.

She tensed her arm, and began trying to lift it up against the weakening tape, her heart lifting as her arm began stretching and pulling the tape away from it.

With a wrenching tear, the arm came free and Marcie reached into her inner jacket pocket, took out the Swiss Army Knife, and quickly cut her other arm free. Then, she reached down, and carved the slashed the tape from around her ankles.

Marcie stood and, fighting the wave of nausea that hit her from standing, quickly worked the blade around the tape holding Daisy, freeing her in moments.

The two girls stumbled like drunks towards the heavy door off to the side of the now-hellish room.

Marcie fumbled inside her jacket and finally retrieved an acid vial. Carefully pouring the contents onto the thick hinges of the door, the girls watched as the hinges began to bubble and smoke, and the chemical devour through the softening metal.

Pushing with all their might, once the hinges' bolts were gone, Marcie and Daisy shoved the door open, and it fell like a tree to the hallway floor with a boom, the girls riding it all the way down.

The sensation of cool air across their bodies was both invigorating and torturous, as their trembling bodies tried to come to terms with the abrupt changes in temperature.

Gasping in cool lungfuls of air, they both crawled across the deserted hall, and sat collapsed against the far wall.

Daisy softly tapped Marcie on the arm. When Marcie slowly turned her head to her, Daisy pointed with her chin up in the direction of the wall across from them.

Marcie looked up and saw the thermostat controls for the drying room. According to the color coded dial, the face of the controls was fat and red, the temperature set to, but not yet reaching, its maximum factory standard of over a thousand degrees.

The hallway was rapidly starting to warm, so Daisy slowly stood up, shuffled over to the thermostat, and turned it off.

Then, she noticed some script by the doorway, a sign that read "Powers Auto Detailing-Drying Room A."

"Hey, Marcie, we never left," Daisy said to the still resting Marcie. "We're still in Powers' dealership."

"Then, it seems that Powers is off the hook," Marcie surmised. "It make no sense for him to incriminate himself by trying to kill us in his own property."

Marcie stood up with effort and began to walk in the direction of what she hoped was the back entrance of the place, Daisy following closely.

"It may sound counter-intuitive, but whoever these thieves are," Marcie said. "they're actually helping us solve this mystery _faster_ by trying to kill us."

Daisy gave a worried smirk at that logic. "Yeah? Well, before they decide to _help_ us again, we better get out of here, before we make Sheriff Stone's night by being caught here on a false B and E charge."

"Agreed," Marcie concurred, tiredly.

Before long, they had reached the rear of the building and the, thankfully, still unlocked rear entrance door, and soon, the ragged pair quietly slipped away in the night.

* * *

"What a way to spend a school night," Marcie, exhausted, said to herself again, as she rested deeply in her car, after she parked in the quiet neighborhood of home.

Eventually, she had felt that she had been away from home and her father long enough, so Marcie slowly reached over to open her door. That was when her cell phone rang in her jacket.

"Hello?" she answered with a sigh.

"Hey, Marcie. It's Jason."

"Oh, hey, Jason. What's up?"

"I wanted to let you know that I figured out what that little device was that we found today."

"What was it?" she asked.

"A tracking beacon. It's crude, but it has some range."

"A bug?" she asked herself. "Why would a stolen car have a bug on it?"

"Maybe it was one of those anti-theft locators that helps the police find stolen cars," Jason suggested. "I wonder why the police didn't use it to find this one?"

Marcie sat back in her seat, closed her eyes, and relaxed, trying to find an answer to what sounded like a very simple question. Why didn't the police use the locator to track the stolen car? Didn't they know it was on the car?

They _should have_ known. The owner _should have_ told them about it, so they could have simply turned it on, Marcie wondered, fighting fatigue to stay on her train of thought. So why didn't the owner tell them about the locator? That was something that the owner would have never kept from the police.

Then it smacked her on the forehead. Hard.

What if the owner _never had_ a locator put on the car to begin with. If that was the case, the police could do nothing. The supposition wasn't long in coming.

"Someone took the idea of a anti-theft locator and twisted it," she finally said with a tired smile.

"What?"

"When I questioned the owner of that car, she never told me that she installed a locator in it, and she couldn't have told the police that, either, otherwise, they would have turned it on, and found the car already. If the bug that we found did come from the car, then _someone else_ put it there, not to rescue it-" Marcie postulated.

"But to _target_ it! You think so?" Jason exclaimed.

"It makes sense. It-" A thought struck her. "Hold on a sec, Jason."

"What?"

"I'm a scientist. I made observations, proposed a hypothesis, and now I have to _test_ said hypothesis."

Marcie stepped out the car and onto the quiet street. She took out her penlight from her inner jacket, opened the forward trunk, and carefully swept the interior.

"First, that so-called Sheldath attacks us by a cornfield, of all places," she told Jason. "Assuming that he just wanted to warn us off, how did he know where we were?"

"Good question."

Finding nothing, she closed the trunk, went back to the driver's side, crouched down and brought the light under the car, probing around the front axles, the transmission, the front tires' brake discs.

"And then those Voxellans show up at Powers' dealership, and tried to finish Daisy and me off, tonight, when we went there to follow up on a hunch I had on Powers. How did _they_ know where we were?"

Keeping the mental image of the transmitter they found, in her mind, she didn't see anything under there that resembled it.

She laid on the street and twisted around, so she could sweep the light around the rear of the Cruiser's undercarriage. Everything there looked as innocuous as the front.

Marcie was preparing to stand again, when the light shined on what looked like a small protrusion on the metal belly of the gas tank.

"Hold on. I think I see something," she said.

Crawling closer to the rear, she reached past the obstructing tire, felt across the surface of the tank, until her fingers brushed upon the strange bump.

With a pinch and a twist, Marcie pulled it free, and held a second tracking beacon in her oily palm.

"Jason, somebody bugged my car," Marcie reported over the phone, soberly. "And I think I have a pretty good idea who did it."


	5. Chapter 5

"Marcie," her father, Winslow, called out from the kitchen the next morning. "Hurry up and eat your breakfast. Don't want to be late for school!"

Marcie came downstairs from her bedroom where she had been ruminating about last night. From what she could estimate, Mackey was a genuine blowhard, but he was as much a victim as the others, and Powers was a superior specimen of jerk, but, in her mind, he was innocent of having anything to do with the Voxellans. That reminded her of the incredible fact that there were apparently two species of alien in town, one stealing cars for some unfathomable reason, and the other at war with them.

'Maybe I should have asked the Sheldath if the reason they're fighting the Voxellan was because they stole

their _cars, too_ , _'_ she thought, flippantly.

The victims were all connected by the times and places of the attacks, also, by the possibility that their cars were all bugged prior to the thefts so that the Voxellan could track them down, as well as the strange hydraulic fluid she found...

The smell of hot breakfast temporarily took her mind off of mysteries, as she sat at the kitchen table to dig in.

"You must have been pretty busy, last night," Winslow said from his side of the table.

"Huh?" Marcie asked, freezing between bites of pancake. She tried to hide the rising panic that reflected in her face. Did he somehow know what she did last night?

"You were sawing logs so loud in your room, I thought you were a lumberjack," her father said amiably.

Marcie gave a grateful sigh of relief through a mouthful of pancake, and gave her a father a somewhat apologetic smile.

"Sorry, Dad," Marcie said with a swallow of food. "Homework was really tough last night."

"Was it math?" Winslow asked.

"Science. I had to work out some problems involving temperature extremes," Marcie said, with a slight slyness that her father didn't detect, while she glanced at the morning news being shown on the small, kitchen television.

A commercial break came next and Marcie would have automatically dismissed it, were it not for the outdoor setting of a banner-strewn, car-laden dealership lot, complete with a grinning Sam Mackey in the foreground.

"Hey, people! Sam Mackey, here, of Mackey Motors!" he crowed. "How would you like to own a new Takamoto? Let me show you what a real bargain looks like when you save money getting the car of your dreams from Mackey Motors, here in Crystal Cove!"

As Marcie listened to Mackey's sales pitches and rehearsed script, she was reminded of what Red had told her about Mackey shooting his new commercial this week. She wondered if it was today.

"Remember, folks, I'm the largest car dealership in town!" Mackey finished up. "It's true! More people have bought more cars from me than anyone else! Come see for yourself. You'll save more money when you motor in a Mackey!"

"Thinking of trading your car for one of his?" Winslow asked, seeing how focused his daughter was on the commercial.

"Huh?" Marcie snapped out of her meditations. "Oh, I was just thinking about something else."

"Well, in any case, eat up," he said. "You have a car now, so you shouldn't have any excuse to be late."

"Right."

Marcie resumed her eating while something in the back of her mind, like a cat, gradually played with, and subtly caught hold of, something she had just heard, something that tickled the innate logic in her mind, and made her stop chewing in favor of the possibility of finding a major solution to the mystery.

"I wonder if that's actually true," she muttered to herself.

"If what's true?" Winslow asked, overhearing.

"That more people have bought more cars from Mackey than anyone else," Marcie said.

"I suppose there are ways of finding out."

Marcie thought for a moment, running in her mind ways she could find out about the veracity of Mackey's statement. Surely not in the time she had before going to school.

"Yeah, probably by word of mouth," Marcie suggested, absently.

Then, her eyes widened in epiphany. It hit her like a ton of test tubes.

"Word of mouth," she whispered.

She smiled slightly as began to eat again. Whenever time would permit it, she would have some phone calls to make.

* * *

Red wiped the oil from the rubber gloves that stretched over his massive hands after he released the spent lubricant from the pan of the elevated car's belly.

He walked out from under the vehicle lift while the car drained, and took a casual look around the service center, the workers, the smells of petrochemicals and rubber, the examples of automotive technology that rested within, waiting for his long-practiced ministrations.

He loved it all.

The coaxing of power and potential from an engine block, the expert touch to an errant brake shoe that could save a life, the wisdom to see through the chaos of bad electrical wiring to bring out the efficiency and order to a wayward automobile. He delighted in it, the solving of vehicular mysteries.

Mysteries.

Daisy...

Remembrances of the beautiful redhead and her easy smile lightened the small worry he had that he wouldn’t have a chance with her. Pedigree was a hard wall to surmount.

In all the years that he lived in Crystal Cove, he had never had reason to even visit that part of town. It made him a little nervous to know that he finally may have found a reason to.

He began to picture ideas on how to impress her folks if he ever had the luck to get invited over to her house.

 _'House_ _,'_ he ruefully thought. _'Mansion, more like. I'll probably track oil all over the place.’_

He forced himself to raise his spirits by picturing himself as being the sweet secret that Daddy's Little Girl would be keeping. The Bad Boy from The Other Side of the Tracks.

A ring from the cell phone in his pocket, instead of his boss's admonishing yell, brought him out of his daydreams.

"Red?" his aunt's voice came over the speaker.

"Hey, Aunt Hedda, what's up?"

"Are you busy?"

"Why?"

"Well..." Hedda said, gingerly. "I didn't want to call you from work if you were. If you couldn't handle it, I mean."

"Handle what, Aunt Hedda?"

"My best mechanic is laid up with a broken hand, and I've got a big repair job, maybe the biggest I ever had to tackle. I could really use another set of hands, so, I thought of you. Could you come over?" she asked.

Red frowned in thought. How would Mr. Mackey take this?

"Well, I have to see if Mr. Mackey will let me go," he explained. "He's getting ready to shoot his commercial today, but I suppose I could say it was an emergency."

That seemed to satisfy his aunt. "Okay, dear. Let me know what he says."

"Okay, Aunt Hedda," Red said, trying to come up, at the last minute, with the best way to approach his employee with this. "Bye."

Hedda Herring hung up the phone, somberly, and sat behind her desk in her office, awaiting the sound of his motorcycle.

* * *

The rumble of Red's motorcycle finally heralded his arrival as he parked his bike by the facade of his aunt's repair shop. Stepping inside the shop, he called for his aunt, who beckoned him from her office.

Red opened the door, ready to get to work, before running back to the dealership. On the way over, he was grateful that short-handedness was the extent of the emergency. It could have been far, far worse.

Upon seeing Hedda sitting at her desk across from him, he stepped inside without immediately noticing Marcie, Daisy, and a pudgy, bespectacled boy seated around the front of the desk.

"Hey, Aunt Hedda!" he exclaimed. "Boy, I was lucky Mr. Mackey had enough people around the service center to spare me. What's up?"

He heard a gruff voice from somewhere behind him say, "The jig."

The door closed before Red could react, and standing behind him was the dour figure of Sheriff Bronson Stone.

"What gives?" Red asked, reflexively as he took in the sober faces around him. He felt like the guest of honor at an intervention.

He directed his questioning to Marcie. "Wh-What are you guys doing here? Did you find out what you could about Powers?"

Marcie looked at him coolly through her squarish glasses. "Strangely enough, yes. We found out that he doesn't have anything to do with the missing cars. You do."

Immediately reminded of the sheriff's presence in the room, Red found himself chuckling nervously.

"Me? That's crazy!"

"Well, you didn't do it alone, obviously," Marcie continued. "You was working with the Voxellans."

"But, I was the one who told you about the thefts, Marcie," Red countered.

"That's true, and I confess that I'm somewhat suspicious about that," she said. "If you thought someone was committing a crime, why didn't you just call the sheriff? I doubt that was the reason he threw you in jail that day."

"It wasn't," Stone said. "He wound up in the clink because I was doing my job keeping playgrounds and schools safe from bullies like him."

Red turned his attention to the man. "Hey! I wasn't doing anything, then. You were just profiling me again!"

Stone, from his corner of the room, said proudly, "Incarcerate first, and ask questions later. That's the Stone way."

"Fascist," Hedda said under her breath. Stone overheard, however.

"Coot," he countered.

"In any event," Marcie interjected. "you didn't notify the authorities. You specifically went to me. Why?"

Red looked back towards the girl, saying easily, "Well, word around town was that you were making a name for yourself as some sort of amateur detective. I was just lucky that you were in the other cell that day, so I could talk to you. Otherwise, I would've had to find you some other way."

Hedda, who had her workday disrupted doing what these silly children asked of her, simmered in her chair, under the accusations that flew fast and thick at her nephew.

Since the girl with the glasses seemed to be the one in charge of this farce, Hedda set her sights on her.

"See, skinny?" the woman exclaimed to Marcie. "He thought enough about you to think that you could solve this thing. Humph! Who do ya think you are, accusin' my boy of associating with aliens? And car thievin' aliens, at that? You're just as bad as the sheriff!"

Marcie bristled at the comment, but explained to the adults calmly enough, "When we searched the crime scenes where the cars were stolen, Jason found a broken homing beacon. Since none of the car owners I questioned had installed any kind of anti-theft locator device in their cars, the beacons had to have been placed in the cars by the thieves, so they could track them down, and steal them."

Hedda sneered. "That doesn't explain how you think my boy was running around with aliens."

"I found the same homing beacon under my car, last evening, after Jason and I had our little run-in with the Sheldath, and Daisy and I had our first encounter with the Voxellans."

Daisy chimed in, ruefully. "Yeah. Face-to-alien-face."

"Sheldath?" Hedda and Stone asked in unison.

Jason was next to enter the conversation. "Yeah. Some big cat alien that said that he was fighting the Voxellans."

All of this was going too fast for Stone. "Another alien? What is this? A convention?"

Marcie ignored him. "Anyway, they both knew where we were that day, and ambushed us. "

She switched her attention back to Red. "I also find it interesting that all of this happened right after I talked to you, Red, at Rude Pizza. You must have taken a big chance guessing which car was mine to put that beacon under when I went to the bathroom."

To his credit, Red shrugged. "Not really. That VW? It looked like something a nerd would drive."

"Charming," Marcie said flatly. "By the way, I noticed that the Sheldath was a pretty big fellow, as opposed to the relatively thinner Voxellans."

"Meaning?" asked Red.

"Meaning you may work with these Voxellans, but you can't look like them. You're too large. So, instead, you bugged my car to follow me, and then hoped to scare me off the case in your _Sheldath_ costume.

His underestimation of her was readily apparent, and Red couldn't help by smile at that, despite the setting and circumstances.

"So you knew it was me, huh?" he said. "I had hoped that I could scare ya, but you're pretty tough for a brainiac."

That honest appraisal made Marcie smile in return. "Thanks. Sorry I kicked you so hard in the cornfield, by the way."

"No prob," Red said, shrugging again.

The sheriff watched this exchange in mild confusion. In his experience of watching television, most confessions to a crime were rarely this cordial.

"Wait a minute," Stone said. "He was stealing cars...and he _wanted_ you to find out that he was stealing cars? Huh, if only all criminals were this obliging."

Marcie considered that, too, but then remembered that Red had been operating with ulterior motives, as well.

"I have to admit, though," she said to the boy. "that was a nice touch telling me that Powers was up to something, and then making me think _he_ was the Sheldath by leaving the same kind of sunglasses that he owns in the cornfield for me to find. A _red herring_ to the last."

"I had to make you think Powers was behind it all," Red said, simply.

"To what end?"

Red looked down, sheepish and uncomfortable. Although he wore a heart tattoo on his thick arm, he was not used to wearing his heart on his sleeve.

"I...was trying to protect you guys," he confessed. "If it started looking like you could actually solve this thing..."

Jason perked up worriedly at that statement. "Wait. Protect us from what?"

For long moments, Red said nothing.

Marcie frowned in confusion. Now, he clams up, she thought.

"I don't understand," she said. "You wanted me to look into the thefts. If I was as good as you thought I was, then you would have known that I would have solved it, eventually, and find out it was you. So, why _did_ you want me to solve this mystery so badly?"

Red looked at his silent aunt, who was riveted by all that had been said, and was now looking back at him, expecting an answer. What she found was the small, fearful child of long ago, that ran into her arms whenever he couldn't find strength. And right now, he looked small and fearful. He dearly wished he could run out of the office.

Red took a breath and said, quietly, "I-I couldn't go to the police. It's blackmail."

The office, suddenly, was plunged into the depths of momentarily uncomfortable silence.

Daisy had to break that silence. "Someone has something on you?"

"Not me," he said, painfully, while looking sadly at Hedda. "My aunt."

Hedda's eyes grew in shock, and she immediately began running through her mind anyone who had ever displayed any ill will towards her. There were more that she cared to admit, but would any of them want to go through these lengths? "Me? What did I do that's so bad that somebody wants to squeeze me?"

Red was quick to answer. "Nothing, Aunt Hedda! But you're a businesswoman. A reputation in a town like Crystal Cove can make or break you, and bad news can travel fast."

"What do you mean?" Hedda asked.

Red hung his head. To the people around him, he never looked so defeated, but to his credit, he continued.

"I was warned not to go to the cops, and was told that if I didn't play ball, they'd hurt your business, Aunt Hedda. Shut you down."

"Who's "they?""Jason found himself asking.

Under his aunt's concerned gaze, Red tried to find the will to fight against the impulse to say nothing again. "I...I don't know if should say, but some incriminating evidence, here, an anonymous phone call to the sheriff, there, and you'd be arrested for suspicion. Your reputation as a businesswoman would be trashed. No one would ever trust you around cars or bikes again. What kind of life is that? I love you too much to ever let anything like that happen, so...I did it. I helped steal cars."

He glanced over to Marcie. "That's why I kept leading you in the wrong direction with Powers. If they found out that you were getting close to the truth, they'd suspect that I had something to do with that, and come down hard on Aunt Hedda."

"They did more than that," Marcie muttered, thinking of her and Daisy's recent close call.

"I had nothing to do with what happened in that drying room, I swear," Red said with true sincerity.

"I know."

Without preamble, Hedda sadly stood up, went to her nephew, and hugged him.

"Oh, Red! You didn't have to do that for me," she said into his tear-soaked chest.

"Yes, I did, Aunt Hedda," Red explained in the embrace. "When Mom and Dad died, you took care of me, and I owe you that and lots more."

Stone straightened his posture and puffed his chest with his usual self-importance. "Well, it's pretty clear what needs to be done, here. I was hoping for an arrest, and it looks like Christmas came early for me."

Daisy, catching the movement of the sheriff walking over to Red, handcuffs dangling from his hand, reacted first.

"Wait, Sheriff! We know he confessed to his part in the crime, but didn't you hear him? He had to protect his aunt. Doesn't that count for something?"

Stone, after a beat, said easily, "Nope!"

Hedda swiveled so she was interposed between Stone and Red. "Sheriff, don't take my boy away! I-I won't press any charges, if that's what it takes.

Stone couldn't believe this behavior. The boy was a criminal, something Stone always believed, and now this misguided portion of the citizenry was protecting him! Obviously, they were not thinking of the people he helped to steal from.

"You can't _not_ press charges!" the sheriff explained with an exasperated yell. "He didn't steal from _you_!"

"Then how about you let him fix what he did wrong," Marcie quickly offered, diplomatically. "Obviously, the _blackmailer_ is the one who put Red in this position. Red knows who he is, and he can help you catch him and then you'll have a really big arrest."

Stone stopped in his tracks, thinking. Sometimes, Marjorie actually said thing that he wanted to hear.

"Hmm, I always did want a collar so big, it could fit one of those big Mardi Gras heads," he admitted, slowly. "Alright, he can help me catch this so-called blackmailer, and round up the car thieves. But afterwards, he'll have to do... _the right thing_."

Marcie ignored Stone's over-dramatic way he said "...the right thing." She was just grateful he was listening to her. "Red's a good guy. He understands what he has to do."

Just then, Red was of two minds. He was relieved that he was getting what looked like a reprieve from actually doing some serious jail time, and on the other hand, he didn't like the fact that everyone was talking about him as though he were non-existent, or worse, had no say in his fate.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. "How about Red speaking for Red, huh?"

"Alright, then," Stone said, leisurely swinging his handcuffs and listening to the almost musical sound they made. "What _do_ you have to say about it?"

Red looked around at Marcie and the gang, then looked at his sad aunt. They were the reason why he wasn't in cuffs and sitting in the back of Sheriff Stone's patrol car, right now, and she was the reason he would risk such a fate in the first place. The looks on their faces, however, told him with crystal clarity that now, truly, was not the time for this unwarranted braggadocio.

Red took a determined sigh, then said, resolutely, "What they said."

 


	6. Chapter 6

The dingy, weathered warehouse by the docks was chosen for its size, relatively smaller than others in that utilitarian neighborhood, and therefore, to its owner, unassuming and safe.

Within its dusty, rust-covered interior, a small crew of Voxellans in holstered coveralls worked over semi-disassembled cars in a central work area, their chassis looking like steely carrion picked nearly clean by these criminal vultures.

On one side of the ground floor, tables and shelves were set up, holding all manner of cannibalized car part, marked and sorted, and ready to fill the containers that also sat by the parts area.

On the other side, by a far, lonely corner, other cars were parked side by side, covered with old tarps and blankets, and possibly awaiting their turns under the blowtorch and the wrench.

A radio, blaring on a workbench, provided the workers some welcomed diversion from the noise and drudgery of their work.

From a cracked window, a Voxellan happened to notice what he thought was movement from somewhere outside the warehouse. It was hard to judge from the cracked and dirty condition of the window, but he was almost convinced that he saw someone out there.

A fellow Voxellan called to him for help with a stubborn engine block, and the cautious criminal gave the window one last wary glance before slowly walking away from it.

Crouching behind a parked car across from the warehouse, Deputy Bucky gave a nervously grateful sigh.

He glanced up and down the street, in the direction of disguised vans that were quietly and strategically parked.

It was almost time.

* * *

The make-up artist was finishing her touches on Mackey's face as he sat back in the trailer provided for him. A faint smile played across it while he thought about what he'd say in front of the camera. The familiar feeling of anticipation was nothing special to an old hand like Mackey, who had been making his commercials for several years now.

He looked out of the trailer's small window at the busy video crew setting up the cameras and other equipment around the lot, plotting the scenes and camera angles needed based on Mackey's personal input.

He picked up the thin script and studied it. It wasn't much, page count-wise, but he looked through with all the pleased reverence of a screenwriter's first written work.

"Check out the all new Takamoto! Automatic transmission, AM/FM cd/mp3, power windows, locks and doors, and much, much more!" he read as the make-up artist packed up her case and left the room. "Yeah. That sounds good."

Outside and approaching the trailer, a reed of a man, wearing jeans, a dark t-shirt, sunglasses, and a cap that framed his bearded face, came to the metal door and gave it a rap.

"Are you ready, Mr. Mackey?" the young director asked. "We're getting ready to start shooting."

Mackey stood up from his chair and maneuvered towards the front door of the trailer, answering, "All right."

Stepping out, Mackey beheld the cameras, the cars, the colorful, plastic banners whipping in the breeze, and let the nostalgia of his first commercial wash through him, energizing him, and helping him to focus all of his years of salesmanship and patter into this one gloriously constructed moment of capitalism.

The thin, bearded man settled into his director's chair and lifted his megaphone to his lips.

"Places, people," he called out to his crew. Then he directed his attention to Mackey, who stood as casually on his mark as a eager man could, and said to him, "Ready when you are, Mr. Mackey."

Mackey gave a nod of acknowledgement, smiled to his mental audience welcomingly as the cameras pointed in his direction, and stepped into his first take of the commercial.

When he was done, the director asked for another take. Mackey, thoughtfully conceding that the first take, perhaps, couldn't convey enough his presence to make people want to get up off their collective couches and buy his cars on the first try, so he obliged the director.

He walked back to his spot by the cars, and then saw Red walking towards the set, no doubt eager to see what his boss did to make his ship of industry remain afloat.

"Hey, Red," Mackey greeted him, as he faced the cameras again and loosened up for his next performance.

"Hi there, Mr. Mackey," Red said, stopping, Mackey had noticed, a few feet away from where he was standing, and rather close to being in the shot with him.

"What can I do for you?" Mackey asked. "Whatever it is, I'll take care of it after the shoot."

"That's alright, Mr. Mackey," Red said, smoothly. "It won't take but a minute. I just wanted to tell you that it's over. They know."

One of the cameramen, looking through his equipment, initially thought something was wrong with his camera. Either the video equipment had malfunctioned somehow and desaturated all the color from Mackey, or simply, all of the color had _actually_ drained from his face at a shocking speed.

Mackey stiffened, forgetting to take this conversation out of camera view. His face, a hard mask of ill-controlled fear and simmering anger.

"What?" Mackey asked with icy menace. "I told you what would happen if you ratted me out and messed up my operation. Who was gonna pay in the end."

If Red was intimidated by the threat, it didn't show. "I didn't have to. She figured it out all by herself," he told him.

Mackey's mind skipped like an old record, shaken with this new information. "She?" he asked, confused.

On cue, the driver and passenger doors of two of the lot cars nearest to Mackey's position opened. Stepping out of their hiding places were Marcie, Jason, Daisy, and Sheriff Stone.

"Well, not exactly by myself," Marcie said, giving herself a little stretch. "I had help."

Mackey looked at Marcie, quietly dumbfounded. _She_ found him out? She was actually _serious_ about solving the thefts?

"You?" he finally managed to ask. "You were _actually_ working on the case?"

Marcie shrugged, with an almost exasperated smirk. "That is why you call me that day, isn't it? To help? We already know about you forcing Red to work for you, but the fact that you were running a car theft and chop-shop ring on the side took a little longer to figure out, what with your crew dressed up as aliens, and all."

Mackey gave her a quizzical frown. "What do you mean?"

"We found the homing devices that you put on the cars prior to stealing them, and Marcie found hydraulic fluid on the ground by one of the crime scenes," Jason spoke up.

"After I analyzed it," Marcie told Mackey. "I discovered that the fluid didn't come from a car. It came from a helicopter. Yours, I believe."

An incredulous laugh exploded from Mackey from that suggestion. "What? I don't own a helicopter."

Marcie smirked and continued. "Your ego says otherwise. When I came into your office that day, I saw that you had a lot of newspaper clippings on the walls. I noticed that one of them told of you buying a small helicopter to celebrate your time serving in the army as a pilot. Now why would a helicopter be leaking hydraulic fluid at the very spot of a car theft? Because it was _used_ in those car thefts."

"Your crew, dressed as the Voxellans, and with you flying them, would track down the cars that you tagged, and force them to stop," said Daisy. "Then, those so-called aliens would blind and disorient the drivers and passengers, just like they did to Marcie and me, and then you would use the helicopter, probably disguised as a spaceship, to lift the cars away to your chop-shop."

Although he hadn't thought to ask the sheriff, right then, why he was here, Mackey turned an exasperated, yet sympathetic eye towards the lawman in an effort to persuade.

"Sheriff, these kids are crazy. Those aliens stole from me, too, remember? You questioned me about it when I called you that day," he explained, testily.

"That's true, Mr. Mackey," Stone said, coolly. "According to what you told me, the aliens attacked you and the security guard, blinded both of you, and then stole ten of your cars."

"That's right!" Mackey said, turning to the bothersome youths, vindicated. "So how could I have had anything to do with the car thefts? Plus, it had to have been a real spaceship to swipe all of my cars like that. One helicopter couldn't possibly take ten cars at once. I wasn't out of commission _that_ long."

Marcie nodded. "True again, Mr. Mackey. The cars were gone when you recovered, but they were never stolen."

She ignored the flabbergasted look on the company president's face and turned her attention to the sheriff.

"Sheriff, when you contact your deputies after the raid, ask them if they see any cars in the hide-out that are still intact. I believe those will be Mackey's missing cars. The helicopter, I suspect, will be on the roof," she told him.

Mackey heard everything the girl said, but his panicked mind only focused on one word.

"Wait! What...What raid?" he asked Fleach and Stone.

Red hotly volunteered the answer. "The one at our hide-out, you slime. Weren'tcha listening?"

Inside, Mackey wanted to scream in boiling frustration, but he could only manage a near-breathless question, born of betrayal. "You...you told them?"

"You bet I did!" Red proclaimed with a defiant growl, standing his tallest. "I'm gonna make sure you _never_ try to hurt my auntie again."

Stone pulled free his walkie-talkie, keyed in a frequency, and said into it, "Bucky, has the raid started already?"

In response, he heard sounds of chaos following a strong breach of the warehouse's exterior, voices of authority commanding shaken criminals to cease their activities, and in the middle of it all, Deputy Bucky's unassuming voice trying to rise above the din.

So focused was everyone on the noise coming from the walkie-talkie, that no one noticed the slow, slight motion of Mackey's hand, sliding into his pants pocket, carefully pulling out a small flat device with a single red button on its chrome face.

He depressed it, and slid it back before any of his accusers saw anything.

"Yes, Sheriff!" Bucky yelled, looking strangely cool in a pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses. "We're inside now, and we caught them all by surprise!"

"Good work. Did you receive the package prior to the mission?" Stone asked.

Bucky looked around the battle before him. Coverall-wearing Voxellans brandished their lightguns in response to the tasers wielded by the deputies.

He grinned as he looked at the criminals' stricken expressions upon firing the blinding rays at the cops. Every deputy's eyes were protected by the yellow sunglasses they wore, before returning fire.

In the backseat of Bucky's squad car, a open cardboard box sat, revealing some spare sunglasses and a note that read, _"With my compliments, Steve Powers."_

"Yes, sir!" Bucky said.

"Alright. Tell me if you see any cars that look haven't been cut open yet."

Bucky watchfully moved, or rather stumbled, through the sea of policemen and policewomen subduing, binding, and arresting felons among the hulks of surgically cannibalized cars, and then, finally, he noticed in a far corner, a large, orderly row of cars covered in cloths and weathered tarps.

He went over to them, removed the coverings, and counted them. Then he made his report.

"Yes, sir! I see ten cars covered up. I don't think they got to these, yet."

"Good work, Bucky," Stone commended. "I'll be right there."

He switched the radio off, and, while he holstered it again, asked Marcie, "How did you know those cars would be there?"

"Mr. Mackey was right, Sheriff," Marcie told him, leaning against the car she and Daisy hid in. "A helicopter that small couldn't lift ten cars at once. But something Red said a few days ago, stayed with me. He asked, "Why steal cars from the lot when all the good cars were in the showroom?"

"I thought about that, and then I realized that the cars from the lot could have simply been _driven_ away by the rest of his crew, possibly hiding inside the cars earlier, just like we did. Obviously, he taught one of his crew to fly the helicopter, staged the attack on himself, making sure he had the guard there as a corroborating witness, and then called both of us in to investigate it, so we wouldn't think he had anything to do with the thefts."

"What I don't understand," Daisy said to the car salesman. "is why steal cars at all, Mr. Mackey? You already had a good business going with your dealership."

"Well, he wasn't just stealing any cars, Daisy," Marcie explained. "He was actually stealing his own."

She then turned to Mackey and said, smoothly, "Actually, I have you to thank for breaking the case for me, Mr. Mackey."

Mackey gave a perturbed expression, and asked, "What are you talking about?"

"I saw one of your old commercials this morning," she said. "You said in it that more people bought cars from you than anyone else. So, I called the owners of the cars that were stolen, and I asked them who did they buy their cars from. They all said that they bought their cars from you, Mr. Mackey."

Daisy perked up with understanding. "So, he'd sell his cars, tag them with trackers, wait for them to be paid up, and then steal the cars _back_ to carve up later?"

"Precisely," Marcie smiled to her friend. "It was all about greed. The cars were already paid for. All he had to do was secretly steal them back, to make even more money by stripping them down for parts and selling them illegally."

Impressed, Stone whistled in understanding, as he produced a pair of handcuffs. "That's one heck of a scam you had there, Mackey. Too bad you ran afoul of Sheriff Bronson Stone."

Stone turned Mackey in the direction of the police car in the dealership's parking lot, and was about to cuff Mackey when he turned his head to the direction of a distant sound.

A sound everyone suddenly noticed. The low-frequency staccato of an approaching helicopter.

Stone again picked up his walkie-talkie and spoke into it. "Good thinking sending in the police chopper, Bucky, but I'll be bringing this kingpin to justice in my cruiser."

"But we didn't send it," Bucky fretted over the air.

"Whatchu talkin' bout, Bucky?" Stone asked, confused.

"We heard a helicopter flying over us when we started rounding up Mackey's gang, but I don't think that's ours."

"Uhhh..." was all Stone could manage as the helicopter came into disappointing view

The craft, a small, black helicopter with a bubble cockpit, came out of its accelerated dive, and leveled into a low, wind-whipping hover over the film crew's trailer.

Surrounding its landing struts like a skirt was a ringed, metal framework of powerful, colored lights set into its circumference, the reason for the chopper's eerie UFO appearance at night. Bolted to the craft's belly was a large, well-worn hydraulic motor, its fluid occasionally dripping from some loose connection, and from a cable-spooled drum underneath, hung an immense mag-grapple.

Its pilot, a member of Mackey's crew who received his sent signal and managed to slip away during the raid, lowered the mag grapple with a tap of a button, and plucked the trailer off its tires.

The terrified make-up artist inside managed to bail out, landing in a clumsy crouch just before the conveyance was hoisted too high to jump, and scrambled for cover.

When the helicopter arbitrarily dangled the captured vehicle high over a car from the lot, everyone else in the area understood what the pilot's intentions would be.

With a cessation of power, the grapple released the trailer. It plummeted and thunderously crumpled the auto underneath, just moments after the film crew and the director bolted away.

It was the distraction Mackey needed. From his jacket pocket, he pulled free a lightgun, squeezed his eyes tight, pointed it at the general direction of the sleuths and sheriff, and pulled the trigger.

The world exploded in brilliance, and everyone nearby fell to their knees in blind disorientation, as Mackey boarded the helicopter with a bound, once it landed momentarily.

Sheriff Stone fought away the spots in his eyes in time to see Mackey begin to ascend in the chopper. If Mackey was attempting flight from the town, Stone was determined to initiate pursuit.

As he stumbled into his driver's seat, the chopper, with its mag grapple hanging, hovered, and then rotated in Sheriff Stone's direction, like an indolent bird of prey.

Stone, to his credit, took blurry notice of that, and desperately put his car in reverse. However, he hadn't noticed a parked car behind him, and he backed into it, pinning him just long enough for the helicopter to easily snag the cruiser up by the roof.

Stone, girlishly yelping, and way too panicked to think, didn't get out in time, and was lifted to a height where, from a distance, he could see a pair of police cruisers approaching from the boulevard to surround the dealership.

"Help! Officer down! Officer down!" Stone wailed out the driver's side window to his fellow cops. "I mean, officer _up_! _Officer up!_ "

Picking up a microphone coiled from the radio in the helicopter's instrumentation board, Mackey spoke confidently, his voice projecting from speakers built into the light rig to the audience below.

"If you want to see the sheriff lose his water another day," he quipped. "then you'll back off and let me go. If I see one cop car or police chopper behind me, I'll spread him like cream cheese all over Crystal Cove!"

In an act of reluctant compliance, the police cars began to be emptied of its deputies.

Inside the parked Clue Cruiser, Marcie, Daisy, Jason and Red blearily watched Mackey fly off with a screaming Stone in tow.

 


	7. Chapter 7

As the criminal and his hostage ascended, Marcie scowled in thought.

"We better back off, Marcie," Jason suggested, recognizing her look of deep thought. "The police should be able to catch Mackey, once he sets the sheriff down somewhere."

" _If_ he sets him down," Marcie countered. "Mackey doesn't look like the trustworthy type, but I've got an idea. Mackey said no police, but he might not be expecting _us_. If we can follow just far enough behind him, but close enough to use the Cruiser's jammer, I can force him to land, hopefully without hurting the sheriff, but we need a walkie-talkie to keep in contact with the sheriff. That way, he can tell us where he's going, if we lose him."

The rapid-fire logic was sound to everyone in the car, but Daisy and Jason weren't certain how to approach policemen to ask them to hand over a piece of their equipment. Red, however, was never too worried about diplomacy.

"I'm on it," he said, stepping out of the car and marching over to a deputy that stood by one of the police cars.

"Hey, we're gonna need your walkie-talkie," Red said to the occupied officer.

"I can't let you use that, son. That's police property. Now, please clear the area."

"Look, you heard what Mackey said," Red entreated. "If he sees you guys, he'll dive-bomb the sheriff. Is that what you want?"

"No, but you can't do anything for him, either," said the deputy. "Now, don't interfere. We're handling this."

"You don't understand. We can help you right now. We can follow Mackey in our car, since he'll only be watching for you guys. Give us a walkie-talkie, and we can keep tabs on the sheriff, and clue you guys in on what's going on."

The deputy stood still in fretful thought. "I shouldn't be doing this," the deputy moaned. "I could lose my job. I told you we're handling it."

"You're wastin' time!" Red yelled urgently. "That helicopter is getting away! If you don't give me that walkie-talkie, pal, the only thing you'll be "handling" is the sheriff's funeral arrangements. Now give me your lunch money!

"Huh?"

Red shook his head. "Er, I mean, give me your walkie-talkie!"

The deputy frowned in the face of this desperate reasoning and possible unemployment, but he realized that Red was right. No one could trust Mackey to keep the sheriff alive after he escaped to wherever he was going, and the further he went, the less chance they had to get Stone back.

"Alright, alright!" the deputy sighed, handing Red the radio. "Here! You better be right about this."

"We are. Thanks!" Red said, as he ran back to the Clue Cruiser and jumped in the back.

Marcie favored him a quizzical glance from her rear view mirror. "Give me your lunch money?"

Red raised his hands in sheepish apology. "Sorry, force of habit."

With a shrug, Marcie started up the car and surged out of the block, weaving through the traffic flow, and trying to follow the helicopter's direction as much by its distant, pulsing sound, as by its fleeting sight.

"Keep your eyes on the chopper," Marcie said, cutting through any advantageous side street she saw to maintain her general heading with Mackey and the captive Stone. "Let me know if they change direction."

As she concentrated on avoiding accidents, everybody else's attention was locked onto the small vehicle above, hoping that the helicopter wouldn't pull ahead so far that it would be lost among the blue immensity of the sky, if they ever momentarily took their eyes off it.

Jason brought his attention back the interior of the car, momentarily, gesturing to Red. "Okay, give me the walkie-talkie, Red."

After all of the tap dancing he had to do to get the radio, Red was indignant.

"Hey, how come, Chubalicious? _I_ got it from the deputy."

Jason rolled his eyes upward and sighed. "Because I'm an electronics genius, and therefore better with this than you are," he told him with pedantic slowness.

"You sure you're not just a better _eater_ than I am?" Red quipped.

Marcie glanced up at her rear view mirror reproachfully. This was no time for sniping in the back seat.

"Red? Jason? What's going on back there?" she asked.

"Red won't let me use the walkie-talkie," Jason piped up, accusingly.

"I'm just afraid he'll slather it in gravy or something," Red countered.

Now it was Marcie's turn to roll her eyes heavenward. She made a sharp right, reentering the main artery of traffic, then made her pronouncement.

"Red, give Jason the radio for a few minutes. Then you can have it back."

Red fumed in silence, but testily gave the walkie-talkie to a triumphant Jason. He switched it on.

"Hello? Hello, police? Listen, does anyone know what the frequency of the sheriff's walkie-talkie is?" Jason asked.

The sound of an irritated deputy came over the air. "Who is this? Get off the air, or you will be arrested for impeding the duties of the Crystal Cove Police Department!"

"We're following the helicopter that's got Sheriff Stone," Jason explained. "We want to talk to the sheriff, so he can tell us where he's going."

"We're working on that now," said the deputy. "Now get off the air."

"But, sir," Jason persisted. "Mackey said that he didn't want to see any cops. We're following him, right now. He doesn't see us. We can help!"

After a seemingly long pause of thought, the deputy gave a heavy sigh. "Alright. Stay on him, but don't be a hero. We'll give you the sheriff's frequency, and you report to us where he's going. Understand?"

Jason beamed. "Yes, sir. We understand." He regarded the others in the car. "We got it. I'm tuning in, now."

The hysterical squawking of Sheriff Stone screams shot from the walkie-talkie's speaker.

"Ahhh! You gotta help me!" he wailed. "Call the national guard! I don't wanna die! Helllp!"

"Sheriff?" said Jason. "Sheriff, it's us!"

The sound of an unauthorized voice on the air brought Stone back to his self-important senses. "Who's on this channel? This is for official police use only. Get off the air, or you will be arrested for impeding the duties of the Crystal Cove Police Department!"

Red snatched the walkie-talkie from Jason. "Time's up," he said to him, then spoke into the radio. "Yeah, we heard all that. What's your location?"

Stone puffed up upon recognizing that voice. "Red? Why do you have your mitts on police property, you hoodlum?"

"Because," Red explained. "as tempting as it might sound, I don't want to jump my motorcycle over the Bronson Stone Crater, any time soon."

"That's _Sheriff_ Bronson Stone, you hood!"

"Whatever. Where are you?"

Stone fought his vertigo to peek out the driver's side window. "Uh, it looks like I'm headed for the airport. He must be taking the scenic route, because I'm almost over the farmlands."

That sparked interest in Marcie. "Farmlands?"

"Yeah," Stone said, overhearing. "From what I can see, the corn's coming in pretty good, this year."

"That's good to know," Marcie said, turning off of the main streets and taking the connecting roads, heading for the town's periphery. "Thanks."

"What's up, Marcie?" Daisy asked.

Marcie gave a private smirk. "I think we have a way of capturing Mackey and saving the sheriff."

"How?" the passengers asked in unison.

"If I can catch up with them, and they're in range, I can force Mackey to land with the Cruiser's jammer." explained Marcie.

Daisy gave a cautious expression, and began mentally judging the helicopter's possible distance from the Cruiser. "Do you think it'll work?"

"It should," Marcie muttered. "I hope."

Moments later, after cruising pell-mell through the wide, near-empty roads that threaded through the Californian farmlands, the teens could hear the distant whump-whump of rotor blades.

Daisy looked up to see the helicopter ahead, flying relatively low with its burden. "I see them!"

"Okay," said Marcie. "I'm switching on the jammer. Cross your fingers!"

The dish popped out of the front fender and Marcie swiveled it in the direction of the only thing moving through the clear blue of the afternoon sky. The helicopter.

At first, nothing appeared to have happened, and Marcie worried that they would cross into the next town before anything else would. But then, the 'copter, almost imperceptibly, began to slow and gradually descend.

Actions that the good Sheriff Stone also noticed. "What's going on? What are you doing down there?" he yelled into his radio. "He's stopping!"

"That's the idea, Sheriff." Marcie called out from the driver's seat. "Hang on!"

Marcie drew a bead with the wayward aircraft, slowing her car down, and keeping the dish focused on Mackey.

Up ahead, Mackey, fearfully taking over flying duties, fought to keep the unresponsive craft going, but managed to only get the helicopter to flutter forward as it continued to drift down.

Marcie, for her part, focused all of her hope that the helicopter would fall where she wanted it to, into the thick, deep expanse of the cornfields below.

Those hopes were dramatically rewarded when the helicopter, at last, could no longer support itself, descending faster, as it tried to progress through the air, until it was low enough for the sheriff's car to be dipped and dragged through the vegetation, like a boat anchor, slowing the helicopter to a hard, awkward landing.

Marcie parked by the side of the road and everyone jumped out of the Cruiser, running into the cornfield and cutting paths in the direction of Sheriff's Stone's car.

Red tore through the crops, one hand up to part the plants, and the other holding up the walkie-talkie, calling out, "Sheriff! Sheriff! Are you there? Are you alright?"

Its speaker stayed silent.

The four teens burst from the crops into the rough clearing made by the passage of the two vehicles.

The police car was flipped, resting on its passenger side. The windshield was cracked and its dented, smoking, corn-covered chassis looked like an agricultural parade float that wasn't completed.

Deciding not to push the car back on its tires, and thereby possibly injuring Stone any further, Red ran over, climbed up the side of the car, and pensively peered down through the open driver's side window.

There was no body.

"Check around!" Red shouted to the others. "He might have been thrown from the car!"

Daisy jogged over to the furrowed path the car made as it was pulled through the cornfield, Red following close behind, both calling out for Stone.

Both teens searched over the light debris trail of broken plastic, stripped rubber and loose metal that came off Stone's car as it touched down roughly.

"I hope he's all right," Daisy said, hopefully, staring at an errant hubcap half buried in the disturbed, littered soil.

"He's Stone," Red said, more to try and cheer himself. "If he fell on his head, he'll be okay."

Red and Daisy turned their heads at the sound of Jason calling them from up ahead.

They both ran up the ruined trail and past the up-ended police cruiser, to meet up with Marcie and Jason, yards further, by the cornstalk-covered wreck of the helicopter, its ruined rotors, curled and bent, resembling the clawed fingers of an old, iron hand.

Standing disheveled but victorious, was Sheriff Stone, leaning against the helicopter's cracked and smoke-darkened canopy. Inside the cockpit, handcuffed to the instrument panel, were a winded, yet angry Sam Mackey and his Voxellan henchman.

"You're alive!" Daisy cheerfully said.

"Of course," Stone shrugged cockily. "It'll take more than a high-speed crash through dairy to stop Sheriff Bronson Stone."

"Don't you mean corn, Sheriff?" Marcie asked.

"I _said_ corn, Marjorie. What do you think I said?"

"Nevermind," she said. The crash _had_ taken its toll on the man, after all.

"Right," he agreed, as he brought his walkie-talkie up to use. "This is Sheriff Bronson Stone. Bring a squad car over to Old Man Wilcox's farm, and we'll need a crane, or something, to get this helicopter out of the field."

There was an interrogative from the radio. "The _cornfield_ , Bucky," Stone answered. "and make it snappy, huh?"

Daisy walked over and pulled the alien mask off of Mackey's minion as a gesture that this mystery was, indeed over, but Red's denouement wasn't reached yet.

He walked over to the passenger side of the canopy, watching Mackey still sitting in a hot funk. Mackey noticed the movement and glanced at him.

"What do you want?" Mackey spat in a growl, dark visions of prison life dissolving his dreams of high living.

"Why?" Red asked, his voice reflecting the betrayal he felt. "Why me? Why my aunt? Why put us both through this? Just so you could use me to squeeze one more dollar out of your racket?"

Mackey's face was a mask of defeat, yet his own eyes were beacons of frosty bitterness.

"Why not?" he said, simply.

Red took a second to digest that, before he simply punched Mackey square in the face.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The bouncy beat of ska rebounded around Red as he sat at his table in Rude Pizza, nursing a slice from his whole pepperoni pie. Even though he was no fan of ska, today, the music was truly lost to him.

He felt foolish, letting Mackey manipulate him so thoroughly. It was so easy to think of love as a weakness, as something that left one vulnerable to the wolves of the world, but whenever he thought back to his reason for doing all of it, for the protection of his aunt, his _family_ , the cynicism would leave him alone.

He started into his pizza again when he heard the front door open and saw Marcie walk in.

He sighed to himself upon seeing her. Although he stood by his decision that he made the right call bringing her into his problem, since she and the others that she somehow roped in, helped stop Mackey's operation cold, but now, he was a young man without a garage.

He glanced up from his meal to regard her approach sulkily. "Let me drown my sorrows in peace, will ya?" he grumbled.

"In _pizza_ , you mean?" Marcie said, jovially.

Red rolled his eyes in exasperation. Even when she wasn’t being smart, he thought, she can't help being a smart-ass.

"What do you want, Marcie?" he sighed.

"Well, I just came by to say that I'm very proud of you," she said, taking the seat across from him. "You went through a lot to protect your aunt, and it was pretty mature of you, helping the sheriff catch Mackey like that."

Red tried to suppress a proud smile by stuffing his mouth with bites of pizza. In his mind, he was a tough guy. He had an image to maintain.

"Like I had a choice," he groused. "besides, I can be mature when I wanna. Anyway, you're preaching to the choir. Aunt Hedda was saying the same thing yesterday when she found out that Mackey was arrested. Big whoop."

Marcie could see the loner act he was playing for his benefit, but she couldn't understand why knowing he helped his aunt was making him so defensive.

"I thought you wanted to help your aunt," she said. "What's the problem?"

"Besides being put in a corner by some hood? I'm nobody's sucker," Red exclaimed, his pride no longer hidden by pizza. "And then I do right by Stone, and I _still_ lose everything. Suckered again.

"What do you mean?"

Red sighed in exasperation. He hated to bear his soul to a girl. "C'mon! I thought you had the big brain, and you can't see? I can't work in the dealership anymore!"

He suddenly looked at her, worried about his outburst. She risked her life for him when he came to her for help, and now he was trying to snap her head off.

She didn't seem upset, but he knew he was in the wrong, regardless. He bowed his head, but Marcie could already see the awkwardness and shame.

"I'm sorry, Marcie," he said quietly. "It's just that I loved working with cars and stuff. My mind was sharp around them, y'know? I could figure out what was wrong, just by looking at 'em, and fix 'em. I could've done without the oil and the grease, and being an accessory to commit a felony, but I was still happy there."

He dared to look up and see her expression, fearing that he ruined a friendship before it could blossom. Something stirred inside him with that thought. Had he actually _wanted_ to pursue friendships? Even life-long ones?

The death of his parents at such a young age and his aunt's stewardship of him had made him insular and nearly anti-social with others almost all his life. Loneliness was his numbing comfort zone, and bullying was his dark defense, but he secretly knew that it was a vicious circle that he had to escape from, sooner or later, lest he never know inner happiness in his lifetime.

But Marcie didn't leave the table in anger. She simply regarded him with honest interest in his feelings, and with a patient smile from her, she told him that it was okay.

"Just be thankful that the car owners decided to drop the charges when they knew what you did to stop Mackey," Marcie said, then a thought hit her. "Wait. You're a mechanic, and don't like motor oil and axel grease? That's like a surgeon who's afraid of blood."

"No," explained Red. "I like the oil and stuff. I just can't stand the stains. That's why I wear rubber gloves when I work most times. I'm kind of a neat freak."

Marcie brightened at that revelation. So much for the tough loner. "Ha! I thought your _aunt_ put those plastic covers on all of the couches, when I came to your house looking for you. I can only imagine what your bedroom and the garage looks like.

Red looked positively sheepish, as he waved the knowledge down. "Well, keep it under your hat, okay? I don't want people to know."

"Well, that explains you balking when Daisy told you about her dumpster diving hobby that day."

Red found himself sighing again. "Daisy..."

"You really like her, huh?" Marcie asked quietly, pleasantly surprised to see this new, vulnerable side to the big galoot.

"Yeah. But she's rich, and I'm a grease monkey," he sulked. "I don't have a chance."

Marcie couldn't believe that he was going to give up on a chance for happiness with someone like Daisy. It didn't seem objective, but she was a girl first, and a scientist second.

"C'mon! I thought _you_ had the big brain, and _you_ can't see?" she returned his words back to him. "Her favorite hobby is _dumpster_ _diving!_ How hung up about being rich can she be?"

Red stopped his moping upon hearing that, and after a thought, had to agree. "Yeah. I guess you're right. But I don't have a job any more. Hobby or not, that's not gonna impress the folks if I come over her house one day."

"Which reminds me of the other reason I was looking for you," she said. "Your aunt wanted me to tell you, in her own _unique_ way, that there's an opening in her repair shop, and she would like to know-"

Red, happily knowing what the rest of the message could possibly be, cut her off with a yell. "Yeah! I'll take the job! I sure will! Thank you, Aunt Hedda!"

"Well that was easy," Marcie said to herself, then continued. "However, she says that this job comes with a condition."

Red, who was now digging into his pizza with zeal, slowed with suspicion. "What condition?"

"That you go back to school."

A slice of pizza hung limply from a dejected Red. "Aw! I don't wanna go back to school. I had more freedom to do what I wanted when I dropped out, and I could work full-time and help Auntie."

Marcie shrugged. "Well, those are the terms she set. C'mon, Red. You can't beat a good education. Who knows? One day, instead of fixing cars, you could start a company that makes cars. That'll only happen with some schooling."

"Yeah, well...okay," he pouted. "Great. I get to work on cars again, but it's only part-time, because I have to go back to college. What is so cool about college, anyway?"

Red looked past Marcie at the sound of the front door opening again. His heart leaped suddenly upon seeing Daisy walk through the door and, upon her seeing Marcie, headed for Red's table, not noticing Red's lovesick expression.

"Hey, Marcie!" she said, excitedly, standing by her friend. "I just came back from Miss Herring's house, and she is truly cool! I had no idea she was so into petroliana. She's got motor oil cans from the 1920's, and this wicked collection of old radiator grills. I'm going to see if I can trade her my classic Rolls Royce parts for that beautiful motometer I saw."

Marcie looked cynically at her. "You mean she didn't wag her finger at you, or call you a walking stick?"

Smiling, Daisy waved it away. "Oh, you! I don't know why you think Miss Herring is so mean to you?"

"Because she is," Marcie deadpanned.

"No way!" Daisy explained. "She a sweet old lady with a cool collection of stuff!"

Marcie shrugged dismissively. "Whatever. Next time I come over her house, I'll bring my rusty tricycle as a peace offering."

Daisy shook her head, then noticed the boy with the pizza slice hanging from his teeth staring at her in a romantic daze. "Oh, Red! Sorry I didn't say 'hi' earlier. I was just so excited about those parts your aunt's got."

"Oh, that's all right, Daisy," Red said, shyly. "Yeah, my aunt loves cars just as much as I do."

Marcie, suddenly looking sly with thought, stood up and gave her seat to Daisy. "Hey, Daisy, I have to go to the book store, but why don't you tell Red what school you go to."

"Darrow U, of course," Daisy told him, sitting down. "Why? Are you thinking about going there?"

Red sat back, feeling relaxed. This was refreshing. Just the act of two young people talking about school felt pleasantly fine to him now. "Yeah. Is it any good? My aunt wants me to go."

Daisy was affected by a similar air, feeling more at ease. "Oh, yeah. My folks wanted me to go, too, and I didn't want to, at first, but when I checked out the dumpsters they've got, I just had to give it a chance. Y'know, if you can find something worth coming to college for, you should go for it. Give it a chance."

Red couldn't help smiling at her. "Y'know, I think I will. Wanna slice?"

Smiling herself, Daisy reached over and picked up a slice from the paper plate.

"Well, it's obvious that you two have a lot to talk about," Marcie said to them from over her shoulder as she walked away from the table. "I'll see you guys later."

‘Daisy and Red,’ she thought. _‘Love is funny.’_

Marcie knew that she had more than enough time to get to the book store, but if there was any chemistry between the two of them, it was best to leave and let things develop on their own, and if there was anything she knew she was good at, it was chemistry.

Marcie suddenly found that smiling was becoming contagious, as she gave an understanding smirk, reached the front door and stepped out into the bright afternoon.

 


End file.
